Is it safe to remove orphan package?

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1

Trying to free up some space and found pacman -Qtdq can list orphan packages that can be removed but not sure if I should do it, I’m skeptical that it probably break my system .

here is the output of pacman -Qtdq

ada
alsa-card-profiles
appstream-glib
audiofile
bluez-qt5
breath2-wallpaper
celt
ceph-libs
cmake
cython
db
elfutils
ffmpegthumbnailer
freeimage
gcab
geocode-glib
glad
glibmm
glibmm-2.68
gnome-desktop
gnome-icon-theme-symbolic
gnome-video-effects
gptfdisk
granite
grantlee
gsettings-qt
gtk-theme-breath
http-parser
jemalloc
js60
js78
kactivities-stats5
kdesu5
kdnssd5
kdsoap-qt5
kfilemetadata5
kholidays5
khtml
kidletime5
kimageannotator-qt5
kinit
kirigami-addons5
knotifyconfig5
kpeoplevcard
kquickcharts5
krunner5
ktexteditor5
ldns
lib32-alsa-oss
lib32-attr
lib32-gstreamer
lib32-json-glib
lib32-lz4
lib32-openal
lib32-pcre
lib32-rest
libcheese
libcroco
libdispatch
libgit2
libibus
libkdcraw5
libksane5
liblouis
libmediainfo
libofa
libomxil-bellagio
libqaccessibilityclient-qt5
libqtxdg
libsbsms
libsidplay
libsmbios
libtg_owt
libvisual
libxres
lshw
lua52
mauikit
meson
metis
mhwd-nvidia-340xx
modemmanager-qt5
ndctl
networkmanager-qt5
node-gyp
noto-fonts-compat
openssl-1.1
opusfile
oxygen-sounds
perl-parse-yapp
pkgfile
portmidi
portsmf
progsreiserfs
python-appdirs
python-cachecontrol
python-colorama
python-commonmark
python-contextlib2
python-distlib
python-future
python-importlib-metadata
python-nspektr
python-ordered-set
python-pep517
python-ply
python-progress
python-pycurl
python-pydantic
python-pyopenssl
python-pyparsing
python-resolvelib
python-retrying
python-rich
python-sip4
python-tenacity
python-toml
python-uc-micro-py
python-validate-pyproject
qgpgme-qt5
qqc2-desktop-style5
qt5-script
qt5-systems
qt5-webengine
qt5-webkit
rapidjson
sof-firmware
spdlog
startup-notification
steam
suil
ttf-opensans
v86d
vamp-plugin-sdk
wayland-protocols
web-installer-url-handler
webkit2gtk
webrtc-audio-processing-0.3
wpebackend-fdo
wxwidgets-gtk3
yasm
zita-alsa-pcmi
zita-resampler
2

You cannot break the system removing orphans.

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3

There are many threads on the forum about this subject already, so please, next time perform a search. Here’s a still fairly recent example, albeit perhaps not the most recent one. :point_down:

You can start by first removing all of the packages in that list that are shown as “alien” (:alien:) — those are all either AUR packages or packages no longer featured in the repositories. I can already identify a couple of them from here without having to look up on them — e.g. ceph-libs, which was dropped to the AUR and doesn’t even build properly anymore if you try installing it from there.

Other than that, some of the qt5-specific stuff can also safely be removed because it was already superseded by a qt6 version. Examples below… :point_down:

  • kactivities-stats5
  • kdesu5
  • kdnssd5
  • kfilemetadata5
  • krunner5
  • ktexteditor5

There are plenty more — and not just qt5 stuff — but you should check the others ending in 5 or -qt5 on whether there already are qt6-based replacements for them in the repos. If it’s an orphan from the AUR, then by definition it’s not needed — it may even have only been a build-time dependency for something else.

When in doubt, check with your package manager.

Oh yes, you can. :grin:

If your initial installation is old enough, then the newer versions of the packages from the original install medium may still be marked as “explicitly installed”, rather than “installed as a dependency”.

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6

Thanks

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7

Only if a package maintainer didn’t do his job. Or if a system is already broken in some other way. It is in theory possible. In theory it is also possible that an asteroid kills us all tomorrow, just like the dinosaurs. But i won’t loose my sleep over that possibility.

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