as @cscs told, using Architect and selecting Unconfigured Desktop you may get a very minimal install
I talk regarding Plasma, others versions I don’t know, I think this is close to Arch
How minimal is minimal in your opinion?
I ask because I maintain the editions based on Openbox and have experimented with Openbox to evaluate how much I can strip off without sacrificing too much functionality.
If I look at the desktop profile for KDE as an example
I might remove the following:
modemmanager
android-tools
android-udev
gvfs
gvfs-afc
gvfs-gphoto2
gvfs-mtp
gvfs-nfs
gvfs-smb
kamera
pamac-gtk
pamac-tray-icon-plasma
pamac-cli
bluedevil
kdeplasma-addons
konversation
gwenview
p7zip
unarchiver
kdegraphics-thumbnailers
ffmpegthumbs
ruby
kaccounts-providers
sshfs
poppler-data
firefox
manjaro-hello
manjaro-settings-manager-knotifier
powertop
screenfetch
yakuake
(not all of those are on the same level … but from a quick look at the list those are some of the ones with some reasonable argument to be unlisted in my opinion)
( oops … PS … heres where you can find such a list: manjaro/kde/Packages-Desktop · master · Profiles & Settings / iso-profiles · GitLab )
4 Likes
An elegant solution could be to make a total minimal with just the core system and to add to the installer a script like this one that is already nicely structured :
But with an even more structured structure :
- do you use a printer? → core packages plus options (that is cups plus do you want hplip?)
- do you use wifi?
- do you want audio?
- do you work on audio files?
- do you want flatpaks?
and so on…
(and for the lazy, just like the script I mention, have one or several possible presets)
That would be pretty universal ! 
This topic and some before it has been the primary idea behind the Manjaro Application Utility which was created to facilitate a minimal interface for adding/removing popular applications. It is integrated into Manjaro Hello but can be used standalone as well.
It draws data from a json datafile - which describes which package to install making it easy to adjust. e.g. making hplip an option instead of dependency
I’ve not any experience in Openbox, so I might not give any suggestion…
my plasma, starting from Unconfigured Desktop, removing few more things not needed for my hw and my activities, and adding the sw I need, includind 4 from AUR, I think I’ve reached the minimum packgages for my use
screenfetch
██████████████████ ████████ computer@computer-pc
██████████████████ ████████ OS: Manjaro 20.1.1 Mikah
██████████████████ ████████ Kernel: x86_64 Linux 5.8.11-1-MANJARO
██████████████████ ████████ Uptime: 13m
████████ ████████ Packages: 850
████████ ████████ ████████ Shell: bash 5.0.18
████████ ████████ ████████ Resolution: 1920x1080
████████ ████████ ████████ DE: KDE 5.74.0 / Plasma 5.19.5
████████ ████████ ████████ WM: KWin
████████ ████████ ████████ GTK Theme: Breeze [GTK2/3]
████████ ████████ ████████ Icon Theme: Breeze KDE-Story-Dark
████████ ████████ ████████ Disk: 123G / 440G (30%)
████████ ████████ ████████ CPU: Intel Core i7-7700HQ @ 8x 3.8GHz [44.0°C]
████████ ████████ ████████ GPU: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 630 (rev 04)
RAM: 1392MiB / 15477MiB
the official KDE minimal has more 12xx pakgages
ahh, that makes sense, although other distros don’t seem to have it, so maybe even if it can’t be removed would it be possible to hide the desktop file in the launcher? it would just help to be less cluttered. (same goes for v4l2)
huh, never thought of that before. Although Plasma doesn’t crash for me at least enough to warrant an application specifically for handling it. Plus yakuake is pretty intrusive (for lack of a better word) as it pops up a notification every time you login and is easily called accidentally with a random keypress.
strange, because I seem to remember seeing it on my kde minimal install.
I was meaning in relation to other distros as opposed to windows or macos, as people switching from them usually have other larger concerns such as if their favourite application will or will not run.
I don’t expect it to have a large or even necessarily noticeable impact on manjaro’s popularity (at least in the short term) but in my opinion it makes Manjaro more appealing to people who want their system to be clean and bloat free. (which is something that I know many people look for in their linux distros)
Yes, I am aware, although it would be nice to have it by default with calamares as well.
I just feel that a lot of applications installed by default are not going to be used in day to day work for most people. For example while many users may love the idea of a drop down terminal and an IRC client, there is a substantial amount of those who have no use for these kinds of things, and the people who do I’m sure wouldn’t mind quickly grabbing them from whichever package manager they prefer which can take literal seconds on modern hardware. It’s just nice for the rest of us to worry about the software we do want rather than the software we don’t
1 Like
Not sure how will you do that once the MSN and MHWD will be part of it … it seems the tendency is to suggest Manjaro to provide and Arch bare system, no branding, just the easiness of install.
That can be done, but then people will ask why there is installed and no desktop file provided for it, why … etc … etc? I’m sure it can’t be removed, so please take a look again to those distros that “do not provide it” …
There are options to disable that.
Not arguing about how we remember things, is not installed with the minimal ISO.
I specifically included branding in my example, and …
$pacman -Qi manjaro-hello
...
Required By : None
mk … well … as it is now … it can easily be removed … is not used by proficient users, not needed after early days for new users … and thus probably has little place ina ‘minimal’ profile.
I cant speak to some other octopus of manjaro tools in the future
We plan to implement more granular package selection at install time, which should fill this need nicely.
I just noticed that while qt5-tools is listed as a dependency of kdeconnect, it isn’t actually required, as I ran pacman -Rdd on it and kdeconnect still runs fine, so that might be at least one thing that could be slimmed down.
just tried the minimal kde 20.2 testing version, gsmartcontrol is there.
Is the minimal of the KDE Git or the normal KDE ?
That package comes directly from arch. If you have
- tested all
kdeconnectfunctionality and - determined there is no need for
qt5-toolsand - can reproduce that on an arch system
then you can take your case to the packager.
1 Like