Headless Manjaro before installing new Desktop Environment

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1

I saw on the wiki of Manjaro that it is not recommended to install multiple desktop environment. But I’m not interested to install both of them. I just want one. My idea is to uninstall completely my actual desktop environment (Gnome) and then install KDE with his complete settings , preference and users.

My question here is, how to do it? Or is it a good solution? Is it possible at all?

2

Probably drop to TTY to do it.
So after boot, from login screen hit Ctrl+Alt+Fx
(where x is a numeral … F1 or F2 is often assigned to the graphical session - another such as F4 may be used for TTY)
Once there you can login and begin your process of removal and install.
Ex:

sudo pacman -Rns gnome gnome-extras
sudo pacman -Syu plasma
systemctl reboot

(again, just an example, please use whatever commands are pertinent for you)

5

Will the users be deleted?
And the installed apps and settings will be all deleted?

6

No, users will not be deleted along with packages.
If that is something you would like to do as well please let us know.

I tried to say more than once it was just an example … I dont know what packages you have installed.
But given the right arguments, yes the packages and their save files will be removed.
I can try and make a list I think would be roughly correct:

sudo pacman -Rns $(curl -s http://0x0.st/Hj1b.txt)

(check out the link first if you want to see the list)

I actually have a tool that could help: Mapare - manjaro package restore

Its what I used to make the list above - it sources the package lists from manjaros gitlab.

You can use it without downloading too … so to install KDE you can run

bash <(curl -s https://gitlab.com/cscs/mapare/-/raw/main/mapare) -i

And input KDE when prompted … it will then download and install the packages you would normally get from a manjaro kde ISO.
If you want to see what it would install first you can use the print function by adding a p:

bash <(curl -s https://gitlab.com/cscs/mapare/-/raw/main/mapare) -ip

…
Interesting thought though … maybe this query can be turned into a feature for mapare. It can already identify the file lists … so adding a removal function should be rather trivial.

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