It’s been a while since I did it but I’m starting only now to notice the performance issues, especially when searching for a program in the launcher.
Basically, when I tried installing Plasma 6 I think, I used the command they provided that also installed hundreds of accessory programs with it. Is there a way to.. remove them all? Without affecting my Manjaro install in any other way? What are my steps?
I can’t find the Plasma installation guide that I followed 
am I doomed to a fresh install?
Not necessarily. If you have an old snapshot - you may use that.
If you are comfortable with the cmdline - you should be able to debloat it.
A default Manjaro installation leaves two files in your system’s root
/desktopfs-pkgs.txt/rootfs-pkgs.txtThen use pacman/Tips and tricks - ArchWiki
The easiest would be to trim the entire package set down
How many packages you want to mark as explicitly installed could be derived from the above package lists. Examples on extracting a list of packages
When you have the system the way you like - you can create a snapshot - btrfs is especially useful in such situation.
As a fun fact - the Manjaro Summit Edition is built around btrfs snapshot mechanism.
There are always logs of what you do to your install. So it is possible to undo it.
For example
You’ve possibly installed some of the KDE -meta packages, of which there are quite a few in the repos:
❯ pacman -Ss -- kde -meta
extra/kde-accessibility-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE accessibility applications
extra/kde-applications-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE Applications
extra/kde-development-environment-meta 20241108-1
Metapackage to install a full KDE development environment
extra/kde-education-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE education applications
extra/kde-games-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE games
extra/kde-graphics-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE graphics applications
extra/kde-multimedia-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE multimedia applications
extra/kde-network-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE network applications
extra/kde-office-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE office applications
extra/kde-pim-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE PIM applications
extra/kde-sdk-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE SDK applications
extra/kde-system-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE system applications
extra/kde-utilities-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDE utilities applications
extra/kdevelop-meta 25.08-1
Meta package for KDevelop
extra/plasma-meta 6.6-2
Meta package to install KDE Plasma
These packages, such as kde-games-meta, will draw in a lot of packages:
❯ pamac info kde-games-meta | grep Depends -A 7
Depends On : bomber bovo granatier kajongg kapman katomic kblackbox
kblocks kbounce kbreakout kdiamond kfourinline
kgoldrunner kigo killbots kiriki kjumpingcube klines
klickety kmahjongg kmines knavalbattle knetwalk knights
kolf kollision konquest kpat kreversi kshisen ksirk
ksnakeduel kspaceduel ksquares ksudoku ktuberling
kubrick lskat palapeli picmi skladnik
Optional Dependencies : --
If you do have KDE -meta packages on your system, you might be able to completely remove some of them & their dependent packages. However, some of those -meta packages will have dependencies that you want to keep on your system, so you should carefully check each one using pamac info before removing them.
To see if any KDE -meta packages are installed, could you please post the output of:
pacman -Ss -- kde -meta | grep -i Installed -A 1
Since your description is kinda vague, i think the first thing is to recover your steps so that you know what you did, undoing it is the easy part.
So start with the logs. In case you default shell is bash, look also at .bashhistory. Note that if you use many terminal windows at the same time, part of that history will be in temporary files .bashhistory-xxxxx, so make your hidden files visible first.
Doomed? How long do you expect this to take, and how much time is it worth?
How many lessons are you willing to learn?
The first can rewind your system, the second can rewind any configs you messed up.
Reinstalling is a good way to leave bloat behind - you can decide piece by piece what to copy to your new config as you install applications (it’s good to keep a pkglist handy to remember what to install).
pacman -Qqet | grep -v "$(pacman -Qqg)" | grep -v "$(pacman -Qqm)" > ~/Desktop/pkglist.txt
You can download entire web pages as Markdown documents.Ya, you can’t find the Plasma installation guide… that’s just criminal - you can be flogged for such behavior 
I like this extension to grab web pages and save them to my ‘Notes’ folder.
pacman -Ss -- kde -meta | grep -i Installed -A 1
extra/kde-accessibility-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE accessibility applications
extra/kde-applications-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE Applications
--
extra/kde-education-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE education applications
extra/kde-games-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE games
extra/kde-graphics-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE graphics applications
extra/kde-multimedia-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE multimedia applications
extra/kde-network-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE network applications
extra/kde-office-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE office applications
extra/kde-pim-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE PIM applications
extra/kde-sdk-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE SDK applications
extra/kde-system-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE system applications
extra/kde-utilities-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDE utilities applications
extra/kdevelop-meta 25.08-1 [installed]
Meta package for KDevelop
Thank you all for the replies! It will take me some time to dig through the history of commands.
But I miraculously got a neuron back and I recalled what guide I used back then: Install Desktop Environments - Manjaro
And the team got the wiki back online 
Hint: if you indeed installed some metapackage like kde-applications-meta, uninstall just it. Then all its dependencies will become orphans and you can just clean all orphans with one command or 1 click in pamac.
This won’t affect apps that you have previously manually installed, even if they are kde apps (because they will be explicitly installed and not orphans).
Further to @Teo’s post (which I concur with as probably being the simplest & quickest way to remove the bloat from your system), in pamac’s GUI you can manually change packages that you want to keep, but which were installed as dependencies of other packages, to “explicitly installed”.
I don’t have any orphan packages, so I just found another package installed as a dependency for this screenshot:
So, after you remove one or more -meta packages, you can open the Installed → Orphans section of pamac-manager (the GUI), browse for packages you want to retain, mark them as “explicitly installed”, and then remove the rest of the orphans.
You can also use the CLI to mark packages as explicitly installed via pacman:
sudo pacman -D --asexplicit the-package-names
❯ pacman -D --help
usage: pacman {-D --database} <options> <package(s)>
options:
-b, --dbpath <path> set an alternate database location
-k, --check test local database for validity (-kk for sync databases)
-q, --quiet suppress output of success messages
-r, --root <path> set an alternate installation root
-v, --verbose be verbose
--arch <arch> set an alternate architecture
--asdeps mark packages as non-explicitly installed
--asexplicit mark packages as explicitly installed
--cachedir <dir> set an alternate package cache location
--color <when> colorize the output
--config <path> set an alternate configuration file
--confirm always ask for confirmation
--debug display debug messages
--disable-download-timeout
use relaxed timeouts for download
--disable-sandbox
disables all sandbox features used for the downloader process
--disable-sandbox-filesystem
disables the filesystem part of the downloader process sandbox
--disable-sandbox-syscalls
disables the syscalls part of the downloader process sandbox
--gpgdir <path> set an alternate home directory for GnuPG
--hookdir <dir> set an alternate hook location
--logfile <path> set an alternate log file
--noconfirm do not ask for any confirmation
--sysroot operate on a mounted guest system (root-only)
Are we to assume from this comment that the bloat also consists of Desktop Environments (and perhaps their application suites) that you have installed in addition to KDE Plasma?
That’s what i was thinking but i didn’t want to vocalize my thoughts before he admits what he actually did.
Because it doesn’t really makes sense to install a DE in manjaro. It is already there. If one wants to install from scratch there is arch proper.
Let’s stay positive and hope it’s just some metapackage. Otherwise… it will be “fun”.
To say the very least.
If it were me, I’d possibly save a list of installed applications for reference only; not for the purposes of reinstalling them; and start from scratch.
Of course, that would be relatively simple (for me) as I have /home on a separate partition; the OP would otherwise need to save /home content elsewhere and restore it after performing a fresh Manjaro install.
This would at least maintain many of their settings, but could also require a careful (manual) cleanup of their configuration; removing undesired directories within the ~/.config/ hierarchy, for example.
Thank you so much for the reply! It’s fair to assume that I don’t know what I’m doing 50% of the times and that I probably picked a distro above my pay grade. Lmao
You, and 85% of the member base of this forum. 
(And yes, I am being generous. 
)
If it is your first linux after winboze, maybe it is better to start with something more forgiving mistakes like Mint for example. Not that you cannot use manjaro but you have to be prepared to read more documentation or it will not forgive you.
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