[SOLVED] Can you install Mate on top of Mate?

Desktop Environments Mate
1

Okay, none of this has happened so I’m not asking for a rescue. I’m just thinking ahead (possibly with newbie ignorance).

I have both Mate and Deepin installed in EOS. Let’s say for reasons of HD space I decide to uninstall Deepin. I see via search that DE uninstalls can often result in unintended removals of necessary files, so perhaps the safest command to use is:

sudo pacman -Runs deepin

“Safest” because it’s less likely to remove things that might be needed by Mate. But it may also leave remnants of Deepin behind (such as the Deepin terminal). So a more aggressive command would be:

sudo pacman -Rcns deepin

So, let’s say you think you’ll go with that one. But, just to make sure that it doesn’t sweep too much away, what would happen if – in the same session – you installed Mate again on top of the installation of it that’s already there? Would it skip over (or error) on everything already there yet still “fill in the blanks” left by whatever -Rcns took away that’s needed? Or would it just simply fail because Mate is already present?

2

mate is a package group, so if you:

# pacman -S mate
:: There are 14 members in group mate:
:: Repository community
   1) caja  2) marco  3) mate-backgrounds  4) mate-control-center  5) mate-desktop  6) mate-icon-theme  7) mate-menus  8) mate-notification-daemon
   9) mate-panel  10) mate-polkit  11) mate-session-manager  12) mate-settings-daemon  13) mate-themes  14) mate-user-guide

Enter a selection (default=all):

then you can pick which, if any, packages to install (and reinstall).

If you use pacman -S mate --needed then it will only install missing packages.

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3

Excellent! So it is actually a valid and workable strategy and not just uninformed looniness? Thanks for the prompt reply!

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4

https://endeavouros.com/docs/pacman/how-to-install-desktop-environments-offline-install-users/uninstall-unneeded-de-completely/

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5

@joekamprad Oh, now that sounds dangerous. Risky, at least. Hmmm.

6

With encouragement from your reply, I went ahead and chose this route.

The terminal reported “There is nothing to do.” So…fingers crossed.

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