Uninstalling apps from pamac

There are lots of unnecessary apps that are there on my system. For example, Software Token, Cheese, gThumb, and so on. The reason I’m asking this here is because I almost bricked my system by uninstalling Avahi SSH Server Browser. I only found out later that it’s required for the system to function properly. What I want to know is whether it’s safe to uninstall these apps or not. I am on Manjaro version 21.1, GNOME version 40.4.0, and I’m on Xorg.

If you fear to brick your system then enable the “Software Mode” in pamac-manager. Then it should be in general safe to uninstall anything.

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Pamac always show you summary of what will be uninstalled and what dependencies will be broken – so it’s your responsibility to revise these lists before proceed. :man_shrugging:

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If you want a Manjaro install with fewer programs installed, you can reinstall with minimal iso.

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Lolz - installs a customised distribution and then complains about bloat…

Work out what you need, then go for minimal… I’m sure it’s better to start fresh and only install what you want rather than install everything and then worry about removing itty bitty things; 990kb for cheese is smaller than most wallpaper images.

But the thing is, I am using minimal. I would also only come here only if I REALLY needed help. Which I sorta do. It bugs me looking at all those apps.

You can go more minimal than minimal iso with:

  • Manual install, with your own choice of installed packages, and even DE (same as Arch way, the only installed packages will be the ones you’d have indicated)
  • Using Manjaro-architect, but this time you’ll have to unselect before install the packages you do not want

If you say it’s like Arch, then what if I don’t check something that i’ll probably need? What’s gonna happen? And if it’s that cumbersome, I might as well install Arch.

I’ll be very blunt I run Manjaro and have no issue with the programs that are preinstalled that I don’t use. This is because I know with less installed in Windows my disk space used would be at least double than what’s used in the Manjaro system by the time I add the minimum that I must have in Windows.

@Falav I thought Architect was a dead project?

It is. I looked it up.

… you open your menu,
you see an app that you don’t know what it is for,
you open it and go to “help” or “about” - or you look up the name in $search_engine.

The package manager also provides this explanation and links to the source of the app.

If you come to the conclusion that you don’t need it - or that there is a better alternative to it
you simply uninstall it (and perhaps install the other one instead).

If, when you go to uninstall something, the package manager tells you that other programs are also being removed when you proceed to remove this one,
then you check whether you need those.
That way, nothing will break.

This strategy should not be that much work in a minimal setup.

Perhaps note the names - keep track of what you did.
So you can undo it later in case you need or want to.
But all that is in the pacman log anyway - maybe not easily found when you are not familiar …

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Thank you. Exactly the reply I was looking for. I guess it’s solved then.

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