Only using one application - what can I get rid of on this install?

[jarlath]

Palapeli is a lovely little jigsaw that our girl can play on her very own computer. But the updates keep coming in for other applications and packages and this machine really doesn't need them.

What's the best way to jettison everything else without breaking KDE or linux?

Many thanks,
Jarlath (12.04)

[SteveRiley]

The update process installs new versions of only those packages that are already installed on the machine. The approach I'd recommend would be to uninstall the packages you don't need.

[jarlath]

The update process installs new versions of only those packages that are already installed on the machine. The approach I'd recommend would be to uninstall the packages you don't need.

Thanks SteveRiley, I've installed synaptic package manager. I can recognise on the application level what can be removed - for example Kate. But what about the libs. Is there a way to specify that I want to 'remove all packages except those that this package depends on"? That would work right down to the kernel level.

In case I sound like I'm being over-pedantic, our monthly broadband limit is kind of bad where we live.

[jarlath]

I've just tried uninstalling individual packages and palapeli seems to depend on everything in kde - even kate! So maybe I can lock the versions. Would that be the next best thing? And if so, is there a single package I can lock that will do the same for all kde dependencies? I don't seem to have kubuntu-desktop, probably because this started as an ubuntu install and most users are using Unity.

[Snowhog]

You can open Software Sources > Updates and change Automatic Updates to Only notify about available updates. This means you are only told that updates are available, but unless you opt to download them, that's all that happens.