Open Yast and mark those packages as taboo. That way they'll never reinstalled again after an update. Use zypper dup for updating tumbleweed. The zypper up its for updating openSUSE leap.
Thank for the dup vs up tip. I found it odd having to do both.
Took me a bit to see these patterns/packages (mainly because I've never used Yast). I can see these patterns and the software that they install, is it better to use Yast to remove the packages and the patterns and mark them as "Don't install that sh.t again" or through cli?
Should not matter, whether you use zypper (CLI) or YaST. They use the same backend code (ZYpp).
Yast2 Gui GTK just makes it easier because you can click on the games pattern to toggle delete, update, lock, etc
This is the most annoying thing about TW. You gotta do "zypper dup --no-recommends"
Right... does it even make sense that installing all recommended packages is the default zypper behavior? Lyx for example will install a 2GB Tex distribution by default, which will conflict with any existing Tex install. Why on earth is that the default... If you are installing Lyx, you very likely at least understand that you need to choose a Tex distribution.
Always check the package list when updating. Tumbleweed for some reason occasionally wants to install Patterns even if they were not included to begin with. I've taken to updating with the command:
sudo zypper dup --no-recommends
to avoid installing packages/patterns I'm trying to avoid. You could probably also mask some packages so they are never installed, but I haven't looked in to that.
Hope that helps.
You can also change this behavior in libzypp configuration file, if I recall well.
OpenSUSE use patterns. Groups of packages that can be selected during installation. If one of the included pattern packages is removed it will be "fixed" when updating. You can uninstall some patterns, but be careful as some may be more important than others, leaving you without a graphical interface or something like that. If you decide to do a reinstall, you can deselect a lot of patterns (search for "pattern" in the software selection section of the installer).
Okay so I ran sudo zypper search pattern* and found one called patterns-games-games and patterns-office-office. I assume these are the "patterns" responsible for installing stuff like Kmines, KSoduku, LibreOffice, etc which I don't want. I also assume I can run sudo zypper remove patterns-games-games to remove it all? Or do I need to remove the packages individually and then remove the pattern?
If you taboo a pattern it and the packages it would install will never be installed automatically. I tend to taboo those games patterns.
Removing a pattern doesn't unfortunately remove the packages it installs. Only the pattern "package" is removed.
Patterns almost made me skip opensuse, until I locked most of them so they won't annoy me anymore. I start with only selecting some basic patterns in the installer:
apparmor
base
documentation
enhanced_base
minimal_base
sw_management
x86_64_v3
When installed, I run this in my fresh system:
# save the currently installed patterns in a variable
installedPatterns=$(zypper se --type pattern --installed-only | grep -E "(.*\|){3}" | cut -d'|' -f2 | tail -n+2)
# lock every existing pattern
sudo zypper addlock --type pattern $(zypper search --type pattern | grep -E "(.*\|){3}" | cut -d'|' -f2 | tail -n+2)
# lock every package starting with "yast"
sudo zypper addlock yast*
# unlock the patterns you had installed
sudo zypper removelock --type pattern $installedPatterns
Pro:
--no-recommendsCon:
For a minimal gnome install, use these packages (likely some more depending on you setup):
avahi
evince
flatpak
fwupd
gedit
gnome-calculator
gnome-disk-utility
gnome-keyring
gnome-session-wayland
gnome-system-monitor
gnome-terminal
gnome-tweaks
gnome-user-share
gparted
gtk2-metatheme-arc
gtk3-metatheme-arc
gtk4-metatheme-arc
libqt5-qtwayland
loupe
MozillaFirefox
MozillaFirefox-translations-common
pipewire-pulseaudio
qt6-wayland
sane-airscan
simple-scan
tpm2.0-tools
wireplumber-audio
xdg-user-dirs
xdg-user-dirs-gtk
Bonus tip: When removing software, use the -u flag for less bloat being left behind:
-u, --clean-deps
Automatically remove dependencies which become unneeded after removal of requested packages.
I believe OpenSUSE uses something called "meta" packages that contain a bunch of other packages. For example if there's games-meta package it will fetch a bunch of games and during update it may try to install them again. Search through installed packages and see if you have any meta ones.
Did not find any meta packages installed
They are the "patterns" others mentioned.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0