Re: Remove noatun also removes kde?

On Wed, 2008-12-31 at 11:03 -0600, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
<snip>
Completely normal. kde Depends on kdeaddons; kdeaddons Depends on
noatun-plugins; noatun-plugins Depends on noatun. Of course, the kde package
is not much (if any) more than a "meta-package"; it only exists to pull in
other dependencies. The kdeaddons package is similar.


I to was caught by this "issue" in my early exposure to Debian. So,
what's the quickest way to determine if a package is "meta-"?

Would be nice if 'apt-get'/'aptitude' added a note to the item
indicating it was 'meta' and OK to remove. The only place I've ever
noticed this information is in the package description, which means it
may not be noticed.

I run KDE and don't have either installed, instead I install the parts of KDE
I want without the stuff I consider "cruft": kontact, kget, kwalletmanager,
kmail, akregator, konqueror, knoqueror-nsplugins, konsole, *kfile*, *kio*,
kgpg, klipper, kicker, kompare, kdiff3, kcachegrind, kcalc, kmahjongg,
kshisen. Their dependencies, plus those of the KDE applications I use that
aren't part of KDE: konversation, amarok, karbon, krita (actually, those last
two might be part of KDE...) pull in the Depends/Recommends/Suggests they
need and I have a system that just works. There's probably a few packages I
left out, but that's most of them. Sometimes I'll even go whole-hog and pull
in kdevelop and quanta, but I use (g)vim for most of that.

For people trying KDE for the first time or the first time in a long time, I
do recommend installing the kde package -- it'll pull in everything the KDE
project thinks should be part of KDE and give you a "full" experience. If
you find KDE suits you, I recommend only installing the applications you use.
It saves download time and disk space, can save memory footprint, and might
even make upgrading easier.

These are great suggestions! Thanks for the explanation and ideas.

--
Bob McGowan

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