A question about GUIs...

[Drew]

I installed Ubuntu, then installed KDE, and found I preferred it over Gnome. My question is this: Is there a way to uninstall the Gnome GUI, and would this action also remove the programs that came with it (for example, Synaptic), because I would like to keep these...

[kubicle]

Re: A question about GUIs...

Is there a way to uninstall the Gnome GUI

There is no 'easy' way to completely remove a DE...unless you've installed it (gnome-desktop, kubuntu-desktop etc.) with aptitude or in edgy (or later) with apt-get or synaptic. (aptitude or the newest apt-get and synaptic can auto-remove packages that where installed as dependencies (that is all packages that get installed with corresponding *-desktop package).

It you can't do that, I've seen a few scripts designed to remove all packages belonging to a DE, but I've never used one so I can't say whether they work as expected (you can search these forums and the ubuntuforums with 'remove gnome' and you may find them).

Of course other than messy menus (and some disk space used) there usually is no harm in having multiple desktops installed. And you can edit the k-menu to clean up gnome programs you don't wish to use.

would this action also remove the programs that came with it (for example, Synaptic), because I would like to keep these

If you remove a desktop, software packages belonging to it will get removed, but you can re-install the ones you like if you wish to...the packages will install the needed libraries for them to run.

P.S.
It would be nice if the repositories would include meta-packages to remove particular DEs...like 'ubuntu-desktop-removal' and 'kubuntu-desktop-removal'...shouldn't be too hard to create a meta-package that would replace all packages of a particular DE...just a thought :P

[Drew]

Re: A question about GUIs...

Oh, well. it's not that I mind Gnome being there, I was just looking at it from a disk space standpoint. How much space does a GUI take up, anyway?

[eriefisher]

Re: A question about GUIs...

Have a look here:

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/purekde

Pay close attention to what it's removing, don't go blindly. You might want to remove them one by one.