Can I remove KDE software without uninstalling the Plasma desktop environment?

Help
1

New to Linux, sorry if this is a dumb question. I am trying to remove some of the applications that come with Plasma that I don’t use, such as Kate (I prefer VSCodium). When I run the remove command, sudo nala remove kate, it looks like it is going to uninstall the desktop environment, which I obviously don’t want.

Output:
================================================================
 Auto-Removing                                                                                                                                   
================================================================
  Package:                                        Version:                                                                                Size:  
  kate5-data                                      4:23.08.1-1                                                                           24.5 MB  
                                                                                                                                                 
================================================================
 Removing                                                                                                                                        
================================================================
  Package:                                        Version:                                                                                Size:  
  kate                                            4:23.08.1-1                                                                            8.9 MB  
  kde-baseapps                                    4:22.12.3+5.146                                                                         11 KB  
  kde-plasma-desktop                              5:146                                                                                   11 KB  
  kde-standard                                    5:146                                                                                   11 KB  
  kwrite                                          4:23.08.1-1                                                                            361 KB  
  task-kde-desktop                                3.73                                                                                     6 KB  
                                                                                                                                                 
================================================================
 Summary                                                                                                                                         
================================================================
 Auto-Remove 1 Packages                                                                                                                          
 Remove      6 Packages                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                 
 Disk space to free  33.7 MB

Am I reading this correctly, and if so, is there a better way to uninstall the software I don’t want?

I am on Debian 12 and running Plasma 5.27.9.

2

try just using apt.

or do a man nala to see what all it’s up to

this is what i get when i try to remove kate

sudo apt remove kate
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  kate5-data
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  kate
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
After this operation, 7,098 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

i can also just remove it using discover.

3

Using just apt I get the same result:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  kate5-data
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  kate kde-baseapps kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kwrite task-kde-desktop
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 6 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 9,252 kB disk space will be freed.
4

The packages kde-baseapps, kde-plasma-desktop, and kde-standard are meta-packages, designed solely to depend on a set of individual packages. Such as what makes up a complete desktop environment and set of applications (kde-standard), a minimal core set (kde-plasma-desktop), or even a subsection of components (kde-baseapps).

These meta-packages don’t include software, libraries, or files themselves. When you want to remove something that is included in one of these lists, it has to be removed as well as the app. Otherwise they will cause that app to be reinstalled the next time there is an update. It is OK for these to be removed, though it is usually a good idea to make sure that they are present when performing a distribution upgrade. Re-installing the top-level kde-standard would take care of that here., iirc.

As to Kwrite also being removed, that is because both Kate and Kwrite are two different forms of the same application, and all share the same bits, so they have set things to depend on each other here.

In your case here, kate is a core part of the metapackage kde-baseapps, which is required by kde-plasma-desktop, which is required by kde-standard. Confusing, yes. But so is accounting, which is sort of what I compare it to.

2 Likes
5

if OP were to remove kate using the discover app, would that likely result in the same outcome?

then at least there wouldn’t be any worrying messages on the screen, it would just be gone.

6

Yes.
Discover is still using the system’s native package manager (Apt, in this case) tools to do the work.

It is safe to have these removed, they are just dependency lists.

7

Thank you for the reply! I appreciate the analogy and explanation, I was able to remove the unwanted applications. The naming of those packages is so close to the actual desktop packages that it was concerning. Thanks again!