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A more minimal task-*-desktop

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  A more minimal task-*-desktop Federico Kircheis <federico@kircheis.it> - 2025-06-29 14:50 +0200
    Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2025-06-30 16:10 +0200
      Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> - 2025-06-30 16:10 +0200
    Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Greg <curtyshoo@gmail.com> - 2025-06-30 18:20 +0200
    Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Michael Paoli <michael.paoli@berkeley.edu> - 2025-06-30 19:20 +0200
      Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Federico Kircheis <federico@kircheis.it> - 2025-07-03 16:40 +0200
        Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2025-07-03 17:50 +0200
          Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Federico Kircheis <federico@kircheis.it> - 2025-07-03 18:20 +0200
            Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2025-07-03 20:10 +0200
            Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Federico Kircheis <federico@kircheis.it> - 2025-07-04 07:10 +0200
              Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2025-07-04 07:30 +0200
              Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Federico Kircheis <federico@kircheis.it> - 2025-07-04 23:10 +0200
                Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Greg <curtyshoo@gmail.com> - 2025-07-05 15:30 +0200
                Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2025-07-05 15:40 +0200
        Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Greg <curtyshoo@gmail.com> - 2025-07-03 18:00 +0200
        Re: A more minimal task-*-desktop Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> - 2025-07-04 03:30 +0200

#280499 — A more minimal task-*-desktop

Hello,


I normally install a desktop environment with tasksel, as it installs at 
configures most programs that are to be expected in a user-friendly 
desktop environment:

* login manager
* power management
* network manager

and so on and so on.

I do not know most programs that are needed in order to have such 
experience, and I do not necessarily want to.
Those programs are different between desktop environment (lxde, kde, 
mate, ...) and might change even between versions.

The only issue I have with tasksel, is that sometimes I wish a more 
minimal environment.
In most cases, is I would prefer it would not install some programs like 
libreoffice, media player, browser and mail client.

I often use firefox/thunderbird as mail client, and vlc as media player 
and tasksel might install others.

I could remove those packages afterwards or just set those I like as 
default, but it is suboptimal as they are still downloaded and 
installed, and if not removed will take space and bandwidth during updates.
I would prefer not even installing them.


I could not use tasksel and install only what I want, but then I have to 
learn/verify all programs that are required for a functional environment.


Is there any way to use tasksel, but also exclude a list of programs 
from installing?
At the end of the day, I want to avoid a small subset or programs that 
should not affect the functionality of the desktop (KDE should not stop 
working if firefox is the default browser intsead of konqueror) and that 
take a lot of space (I think libreoffice+dependencies is the biggest 
package in the lxqt environment)

As everyone has different needs, I think that different tasksel targets 
for more minimal desktops experience are not worth.
Now I'm complaining about four or five programs that are too much for my 
needs, but surely there is ton of stuff that I do not care, but other 
might not want on their systems.

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#280506

Federico Kircheis wrote: 
> I could not use tasksel and install only what I want, but then I have to
> learn/verify all programs that are required for a functional environment.
>


Don't use a tasksel desktop.

Install one of these metapackages for KDE:

kde-full/stable 5:142 amd64
  complete KDE Software Compilation for end users

kde-plasma-desktop/stable 5:142 amd64
  KDE Plasma Desktop and minimal set of applications

kde-standard/stable 5:142 amd64
  KDE Plasma Desktop and standard set of applications

Or xfce4 to get a working XFCE environment.

There doesn't seem to be a similar metapackage for GNOME, but
perhaps I just missed it.

Any of these should get you to a point where everything is
working.

-dsr-

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#280507

On 6/30/25 8:46 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> Federico Kircheis wrote:
>> I could not use tasksel and install only what I want, but then I have to
>> learn/verify all programs that are required for a functional environment.
>>
> 
> 
> Don't use a tasksel desktop.
> 
> Install one of these metapackages for KDE:
> 
> kde-full/stable 5:142 amd64
>    complete KDE Software Compilation for end users
> 
> kde-plasma-desktop/stable 5:142 amd64
>    KDE Plasma Desktop and minimal set of applications
> 
> kde-standard/stable 5:142 amd64
>    KDE Plasma Desktop and standard set of applications
> 
> Or xfce4 to get a working XFCE environment.
> 
> There doesn't seem to be a similar metapackage for GNOME, but
> perhaps I just missed it.
> 
> Any of these should get you to a point where everything is
> working.
> 
> -dsr-
> 
> 

Does any of this apply to the MATE desktop? TIA

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#280509

On 2025-06-29, Federico Kircheis <federico@kircheis.it> wrote:

> At the end of the day, I want to avoid a small subset or programs that 
> should not affect the functionality of the desktop (KDE should not stop 
> working if firefox is the default browser intsead of konqueror) and that 
> take a lot of space (I think libreoffice+dependencies is the biggest 
> package in the lxqt environment)
>

Using the netinstall iso, I think you have to uncheck all tasksel
desktop options in the software selection screen, reboot to the cli, and
then 'sudo apt install --no-install-recommends xfce4' (or some other
desktop).

At the end of the day, that's it, don't use tasksel.

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#280511

> The only issue I have with tasksel, is that sometimes I wish a more
> minimal environment.

Then don't use tasksel to install package(s).

One can, however, use tasksel to list its tasks,
and from those, the corresponding package(s),
and in turn, from those, the dependencies and recommends thereof.

E.g.:
$ tasksel --list-tasks
u desktop       Debian desktop environment
u gnome-desktop GNOME
u xfce-desktop  Xfce
u gnome-flashback-desktop       GNOME Flashback
u kde-desktop   KDE Plasma
u cinnamon-desktop      Cinnamon
u mate-desktop  MATE
u lxde-desktop  LXDE
u lxqt-desktop  LXQt
u web-server    web server
u ssh-server    SSH server
u laptop        laptop
$ tasksel --task-packages desktop
task-desktop
$ apt-cache show task-desktop | grep -E '^(Depends|Recommends):'
Depends: tasksel (= 3.73), xorg, xserver-xorg-video-all,
xserver-xorg-input-all, desktop-base
Recommends: task-gnome-desktop | task-xfce-desktop | task-kde-desktop
| task-lxde-desktop | task-gnome-flashback-desktop |
task-cinnamon-desktop | task-mate-desktop | task-lxqt-desktop,
xdg-utils, fonts-symbola, avahi-daemon, libnss-mdns, anacron, eject,
iw, alsa-utils, sudo, firefox | firefox-esr, cups
$
And one can continue to drill down to determine just what package(s)
one wants to install,
and of course the APT system will also handle dependencies thereof.  So, e.g.:
$ apt-cache show task-gnome-desktop | grep -E '^(Depends|Recommends):'
Depends: tasksel (= 3.73), task-desktop, gnome-core
Recommends: gnome, synaptic, libreoffice-gnome, libreoffice-writer,
libreoffice-calc, libreoffice-impress, libreoffice-help-en-us,
mythes-en-us, hunspell-en-us, hyphen-en-us, network-manager-gnome
$
So, in such case, one might just want to install, e.g. gnome-core

And most users, when installing, generally don't want to be
overwhelmed with excessive choices,
and when choosing to install a desktop environment, generally expect
it will be quite complete and
cover all they expect and will likely find they want associated with
that, and not have to be hunting down
additional package to install to give them a (relatively) complete
desktop environment.  For those that want
less, they can install more specifically/limited, as I suggested.  And
if the default were much more minimal on
the tasksel selection, there'd be lots of complaints about "missing"
stuff they didn't get that they expected
to be installed and working with their desktop environment selection
from tasksel.  And if tasksel gave lots
more options at installation time, plenty of folks would complain about that.

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#280555

On 30/06/2025 7:11 pm, Michael Paoli wrote:
>> The only issue I have with tasksel, is that sometimes I wish a more
>> minimal environment.
> 
> Then don't use tasksel to install package(s).

Yes, this is what I am doing, but then I need to manually track all 
packages installed by tasksel, and list all those I'm interested in.

And often I do not know which one I'm interested one, but I know those I 
do not want.

And this also holds for metapackages like lxqt.
It still installs a lot of things, so down to lxqt-core.
It still installs some things I've noticed and to not want, so I need to 
inspect which packages are installed, transitive dependencies included..

I hoped it would have been possible to exlucde dependencies, for examle 
by prefixing them with "-"; for example:

apt install lxqt -meteo-qt

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#280557

Federico Kircheis wrote: 
> On 30/06/2025 7:11 pm, Michael Paoli wrote:
> And this also holds for metapackages like lxqt.
> It still installs a lot of things, so down to lxqt-core.
> It still installs some things I've noticed and to not want, so I need to
> inspect which packages are installed, transitive dependencies included..
> 
> I hoped it would have been possible to exlucde dependencies, for examle by
> prefixing them with "-"; for example:
> 
> apt install lxqt -meteo-qt


You can postfix "-" to get that behavior.

apt install lxqt meteo-qt-

Also, do you know that the -s switch to apt install will tell
you the whole plan without retrieving or installing the packages?

-dsr-

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#280559

On 03/07/2025 5:28 pm, Dan Ritter wrote:
> Federico Kircheis wrote:
>> On 30/06/2025 7:11 pm, Michael Paoli wrote:
>> And this also holds for metapackages like lxqt.
>> It still installs a lot of things, so down to lxqt-core.
>> It still installs some things I've noticed and to not want, so I need to
>> inspect which packages are installed, transitive dependencies included..
>>
>> I hoped it would have been possible to exclude dependencies, for example by
>> prefixing them with "-"; for example:
>>
>> apt install lxqt -meteo-qt
> 
> 
> You can postfix "-" to get that behavior.
> 
> apt install lxqt meteo-qt-


Oh; i was not aware of that, is it specific for apt?
man apt does not seem to mention it.
I'll try it out.

> 
> Also, do you know that the -s switch to apt install will tell
> you the whole plan without retrieving or installing the packages?

But if I list all packages, then remove all those that I obviously do 
not need, and write a script that install only those, it might "break" 
when some packages are updated or new dependencies are added.
With the blacklist approach, I expected it would break only if the 
package is now required.


On 03/07/2025 5:51 pm, Greg wrote:
> I'm only aware of '--no-install-recommends' as far as apt goes.

Yes, but it has the same issue.
Now many things are missing, and I need to search them out, and 
dependencies might change between package releases.

> Of course, with a 100 terabyte hard disk, it can seem rather silly.

  * my drives are nowhere that big, but if someone will pay for a 
replacement, no offense taken, although on some devices it is not that 
easy to replace them

  * downloading and uploading unnecessary data not only takes space on 
my drive, but also takes more time and unnecessarily consumes my traffic 
plan. I'm not necessarily talking about the .deb file by itself, but 
also docker images, iso files, virtual machines, and so on, which are 
built on top of installed deb packages.

  * a system with more dependencies has a higher chance to break than a 
system with less dependencies when upgrading components

  * offsite backups take longer, as verifying they integrity and restore 
process


And I'm sure I can find other reason why avoiding some unnecessary 
dependencies has positive side-effects

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#280563

On Thu, Jul 03, 2025 at 18:15:42 +0200, Federico Kircheis wrote:
> Oh; i was not aware of that, is it specific for apt?
> man apt does not seem to mention it.
> I'll try it out.

Mine says:

       install, reinstall, remove, purge (apt-get(8))
           Performs the requested action on one or more packages specified via
           regex(7), glob(7) or exact match. The requested action can be
           overridden for specific packages by appending a plus (+) to the
           package name to install this package or a minus (-) to remove it.

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#280570

On 04/07/2025 5:56 am, David Wright wrote:
> On Thu 03 Jul 2025 at 18:15:42 (+0200), Federico Kircheis wrote:
>> On 03/07/2025 5:28 pm, Dan Ritter wrote:
>>> Federico Kircheis wrote:
>>>> And this also holds for metapackages like lxqt.
>>>> It still installs a lot of things, so down to lxqt-core.
>>>> It still installs some things I've noticed and to not want, so I need to
>>>> inspect which packages are installed, transitive dependencies included..
>>>>
>>>> I hoped it would have been possible to exclude dependencies, for example by
>>>> prefixing them with "-"; for example:
> 
> No, you don't want to exclude dependencies; doing that will break
> packages. That's why they're call dependencies: the package depends
> on them being installed.
> 
>>>> "apt install lxqt -meteo-qt"
> 
> meteo-qt is not a dependency: it's only recommended.

Isn't a recommended package a dependency?

>> On 03/07/2025 5:51 pm, Greg wrote:
>>> I'm only aware of '--no-install-recommends' as far as apt goes.
>>
>> Yes, but it has the same issue.
>> Now many things are missing, and I need to search them out, and
>> dependencies might change between package releases.
> 
> Except that it reverses the logic: --no-install-recommends will
> install the packages you ask for, but with minimal extra packages.
> 
> When you find that some expected functionality is absent, you
> install the package that gives you that functionality, again

Yes, but I do not know which package provides the missing functionality.
For example, with --no-install-recommends, icons are not shown correctly 
and trash does not work.

Those are two things I've immediately noticed.
I can track down the relevant packages (it takes time) but how many 
other things might I have missed?

And that's just because I did not want some extra functionality I know I 
do not want.

Excluding two or three packages is much easier, and the suggested 
approach of appending a - works perfectly if the package was not installed.


The amount of time required to install a desktop environment from 
scratch with "--no-install-recommends" (including testing that 
everything works correctly) is not worth the space/resources I am going 
to save.
The more practical approach to install the desktop environment as 
recommended, minus some packages I know I do not need, costs only a 
fraction of time.
Yes, I might still have some packages I do not need (without me knowing 
it), but hopefully the amount of space it takes is negligible for my 
use-cases.

> with --no-install-recommends to keep your system minimal.
> 
>    "Now many things are missing":
> 
> Well, you can hardly expect the Debian or the DE developers to guess
> which functions happen to be the ones that you want.
> 
>    "and I need to search them out":
> 
> Hardly onerous: the package names are likely to be in the Recommends
> list of the top-level package you installed.

Might be the case for many command-line tools and most applications, 
with the desktop environment my experience differs, even when looking at 
lxqt-core.

>> But if I list all packages, then remove all those that I obviously do
>> not need, and write a script that install only those, it might "break"
>> when some packages are updated or new dependencies are added.
>> With the blacklist approach, I expected it would break only if the
>> package is now required.
> 
> If your "blacklist" system causes breakages, then you can hardly
> expect Debian developers to give it any consideration at all.

If the script breaks it's a good thing, and obviously it's up to me to 
fix it.
I am not expecting Debian developers to give it any consideration.

With the whitelist I install all the packages, some are not even needed 
anymore, and then some functionality might still be missing.

>>   * downloading and uploading unnecessary data not only takes space on
>> my drive, but also takes more time and unnecessarily consumes my
>> traffic plan.
> 
>>   * offsite backups take longer, as verifying they integrity and
>> restore process
> 
> Those are reasons why --no-install-recommends was provided in the
> first place.
> 
>> I'm not necessarily talking about the .deb file by
>> itself, but also docker images, iso files, virtual machines, and so
>> on, which are built on top of installed deb packages.
> 
> That's a separate concern, and in your hands.

Which is why I do not think that big drives are a good argument, not 
sure if we disagree here.

>>   * a system with more dependencies has a higher chance to break than a
>> system with less dependencies when upgrading components
>   
>> And I'm sure I can find other reason why avoiding some unnecessary
>> dependencies has positive side-effects
> 
> Again, you're confusing the issue by using the wrong terminology.
> APT makes sure that dependencies are satisfied. If an extra dependency
> is added (rare), it gets installed.¹ If an extra Recommends is added,
> you might not even notice the fact when --no-install-recommends is in
> force: and if it were to be undesirable, you wouldn't have to do
> anything about eliminating it, like blacklisting it.
> 
> ¹ apt-get users might require dist-upgrade or --with-new-pkgs when
>    this happens.
> 
> Cheers,
> David.
> 

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#280571

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Fri, Jul 04, 2025 at 07:04:32AM +0200, Federico Kircheis wrote:

[...]

> Isn't a recommended package a dependency?

That... depends :-)

In the strict Debian sense, there is "depends": your package won't
work if that dependency is not installed. "Recommends": your package
might be missing some interesting functionality, but will work,
in general.

One example:

  tomas@caliban:~$ apt show xpdf
  Package: xpdf
  Version: 3.04+git20220601-1+b2
  [...]
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.34), libgcc-s1 (>= 3.0), libpaper1, libpoppler126 (>= 22.12.0), libstdc++6 (>= 11), libx11-6, libxm4 (>= 2.3.4), libxt6
  Recommends: poppler-utils, poppler-data, gsfonts-x11, cups-bsd, sensible-utils

If libc6 isn't there, the xpdf binary won't even start. If it has a
version less than 2.34, it might start, but might do funny things.

OTOH, if you don't have poppler-utils, xpdf will work fine, but you
might miss some nice things to play with PDFs.

(Life, being what it is, gives us a grey area between "doesn't work
at all" and "reduced functionality" -- where'd be the fun otherwise?)

FWIW, I like a minimal system, so I have in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/95no-recommends

  APT::Install-Recommends no;

This puts the burden on me to look at the Recommends section in packages
I install and decide on a case-by-case basis.

Cheers
-- 
t

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#280574

On 04/07/2025 5:32 pm, David Wright wrote:
> On Fri 04 Jul 2025 at 07:04:32 (+0200), Federico Kircheis wrote:
>> Excluding two or three packages is much easier, and the suggested
>> approach of appending a - works perfectly if the package was not
>> installed.
> 
> In which case, I think you should install the equivs package (it's
> in every suite) and use it to build your own packages called
> libreoffice, etc.

But wouldn't it break if I want to install libreoffice at a later point?

> 
> You still need to use one of -s, --simulate, --just-print, --dry-run,
> --recon, --no-act, in order to see just which package equivalents you
> need to build.
> 
> Then, in future, you install all your equivalents before you install
> the DE itself, and APT/dpkg will see that those _recommendations_ are
> already installed. But repeat the -s run after installing your first
> set of equivalents in case there are any second-order recommendations.
> 
> Cheers,
> David.
> 

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#280577

On 2025-07-04, Federico Kircheis <federico@kircheis.it> wrote:
>> 
>> In which case, I think you should install the equivs package (it's
>> in every suite) and use it to build your own packages called
>> libreoffice, etc.
>
> But wouldn't it break if I want to install libreoffice at a later point?
>

You would uninstall the dummy package with dpkg and then install the real
package with apt.

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#280578

Federico Kircheis wrote: 
> On 04/07/2025 5:32 pm, David Wright wrote:
> > On Fri 04 Jul 2025 at 07:04:32 (+0200), Federico Kircheis wrote:
> > > Excluding two or three packages is much easier, and the suggested
> > > approach of appending a - works perfectly if the package was not
> > > installed.
> > 
> > In which case, I think you should install the equivs package (it's
> > in every suite) and use it to build your own packages called
> > libreoffice, etc.
> 
> But wouldn't it break if I want to install libreoffice at a later point?

Yes, you would need to uninstall it first.

If you want a system which can support multiple versions of a
package simultaneously, you will need to look at things like
Lix, and you will need to do even more work.

The point of a Linux distribution is to make things easy to
install software in a way that makes sense to the distribution's
people. If you don't like the way Debian does it, there are many
other distributions, and you can even create your own.

The best thing about a Linux distribution is that you gain a
community of people who know how to do things in the ways that
the distribution encourages. You have to rebuild that if you go
your own way.

-dsr-

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#280558

On 2025-07-03, Federico Kircheis <federico@kircheis.it> wrote:
>
> I hoped it would have been possible to exlucde dependencies, for examle 
> by prefixing them with "-"; for example:
>
> apt install lxqt -meteo-qt
>

I'm only aware of '--no-install-recommends' as far as apt goes.

In aptitude, you can press n or : and mark meteo-qt as forbidden, and it
will try an alternative solution (untested).

Of course, with a 100 terabyte hard disk, it can seem rather silly.

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#280568

On 03/07/2025 21:35, Federico Kircheis wrote:
>>> The only issue I have with tasksel, is that sometimes I wish a more
>>> minimal environment.
[...]
> And often I do not know which one I'm interested one, but I know those I 
> do not want.

Have you considered pinning with negative priority in apt preferences?

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