I installed GNOME on my KDE fedora install some time ago not realizing it would litter my install with gnome apps. Wondering if there’s a safe and easy way to remove them. Everyone online seems to say that removing a DE risks uninstalling a lot of stuff and thought I should ask here to be sure.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

  • @CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
    8•7 months ago

    Uninstall the gnome desktop package, reinstall the kde desktop package and that should pull the overlapping dependencies. Might need to do this from a virtual terminal, not in the desktop environment.

    Or reinstall the OS.

    Edit: there’s also dnf swap command available for fedora, I’m not really familiar with it’s behavior or how it acts when both DE are already installed, but maybe that could be a lead.

    Edit 2: after doing reading, I’m confident you can just dnf remove @gnome-desktop. The .config files will not be impacted. Applications with overlapping KDE dependencies will belong to two groups, and the operation will keep the ones that include the KDE group. I still recommend a backup.

    • @Corr@lemm.eeOP
      6•7 months ago

      This makes sense. Will this nuke any config files I have set up already?

      Thanks for the suggestions!

      • @CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
        6•7 months ago

        Hey op, after doing reading, I’m confident you can just dnf remove @gnome-desktop. The .config files will not be impacted. Applications with overlapping KDE dependencies will belong to two groups, and the operation will keep the ones that include the KDE group. I still recommend a backup.

        • @Corr@lemm.eeOP
          1•7 months ago

          Thanks so much for the information! I really appreciate it. I’ll see about doing that when I get home tonight

      • @CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
        3•7 months ago

        It shouldn’t but I’m hesitant to say it won’t. Back up all the things you don’t want to lose, this is not a risk free maneuver. However in my limited experience it was the opposite - it’ll remove the applications, but you will still have now-useless config files from the removed environment in place taking up space.

      • @leopoldEnglish
        3•7 months ago

        No. all KDE config is in the home directory except maybe some SDDM stuff, which should be trivial to reconfigure if needed.

    • @Corr@lemm.eeOP
      1•6 months ago

      Thanks both for the information and the confidence. I went ahead and deleted the gnome packages and nothing seems broken so far. The dnf remove @gnome-destop didn’t work, but dnf remove gnome-* worked. I made sure all the packages being removed were ones I no longer wanted and all looks well!