Why does KDE load so much bloat?

[WolframaticAlpha]

I am installing arch on an old system to repurpose it. I was thinking of installing KDE, as it is easy for existing windows users, looks nice and is quite light(KDE Plasma Desktop vs Xfce Desktop - Resource Usage Comparison | 2020 Edition - YouTube)

I tried installing GNOME(40), but it was too foreign to the user. Uninstalled and start working again with a clean slate with Linux-zen instead of the standard linux kernel. I also needed to switch back to xorg since wayland was causing a ton of of problems on the GTX 275

After the xorg install, I started installing Plasma and the kde-apps. Little did I know it would so much crap. There was kgeography, kmoneymanager and whatnot. It took 15 whole minutes to install.

'

 

Long story short, KDE installed a ton of unneeded stuff.

 

My questions are:

Why is KDE so $%@# bloated?

How to remove everything but the non essential programs in one clean swoop(basically do a minimal install of KDE)?

 

 

 

 

[Eighjan]

6 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

How to remove everything but the essential programs in one clean swoop (basically do a minimal install of KDE)?

Did you mean that ^^^^...?

[WolframaticAlpha]

13 minutes ago, Eighjan said:

Did you mean that ^^^^...?

Not KDE in it's entirety, but something that removes a ton of unneeded crap, without me listing everything, Maybe a github script, but I wasn't able to find anything.

[Eighjan]

4 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Not KDE in it's entirety, but something that removes a ton of unneeded crap, without me listing everything, Maybe a github script, but I wasn't able to find anything.

You had worded it in such a way as to want to remove everything BUT the bloatware.

 

25 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

How to remove everything but the non essential programs

 

[pythonmegapixel]

Which distribution? If you use something Debian-based then you can pass Apt the the no-install-recommends flag, which means it will only install KDE and what it depends on, not what it "recommends".

 

  

3 minutes ago, Eighjan said:

You had worded it in such a way as to want to remove everything BUT the bloatware.

They haven't. They said "everything but the essential progams".

Essential means absolutely required.

[Eighjan]

5 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Which distribution? If you use something Debian-based then you can pass Apt the the no-install-recommends flag, which means it will only install KDE and what it depends on, not what it "recommends".

 

  

They haven't. They said "everything but the essential progams".

Essential means absolutely required.

I edited to quote the original

EDIT:

My first post included an EDITED quote.

 

EDIT 2

I failed at being (mildly) sarcastic and pedantic in the same post.

Edited May 28, 2021 by Eighjan

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

How to remove everything but the non essential programs in one clean swoop(basically do a minimal install of KDE)?

I mean since you're using Arch you could just install the minimal meta-package as detailed in the first few lines of the relevant wiki page. The kde-applications group installs all available KDE programs. This is explained clearly, again in the first few lines of the wiki page.

1 hour ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Why is KDE so $%@# bloated?

If by "bloated" you mean "associated with a full set of programs that might be useful to people and integrate well with the graphical environment, unlike many existing alternatives, that are all entirely optional" then the answer is that they like people using things they make.

 

If you're this worried about "bloat" I don't know why you're even considering a desktop environment, frankly.

[Nayr438]

If your using Arch, The kde-applications group is a group of all available KDE applications. You installed those, KDE didn't just pull them.

KDE itself doesn't even come with a Terminal or File application by default. For the default KDE Package set, it's just "plasma".

If you don't wan't unnecessary packages, don't pull group or meta packages.

 

If your on another distro, that's entirely dependent on how the distro sets up it's packages.

 

[Alexeygridnev1993]

Just use your package manager commands to remove all that stuff (pacman -Rs konversation konqueror discover...  ). Save these commands as a bash script to do it in one click next time.

 

I completely agree, KDE should stop wasting time developing subpar apps which no one likes and concentrate on the desktop environment itself. But what can we do, we are not even paying for the development.

[TorC]

+ @SauronHave you looked into Trinity DE?

[Sauron]

15 hours ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

KDE should stop wasting time developing subpar apps which no one likes

You say "subpar" but... as far as I'm concerned Dolphin is the only truly complete GUI file manager.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

You say "subpar" but... as far as I'm concerned Dolphin is the only truly complete GUI file manager.

Dolphin is fine, Okular and Krita are  OK, but the rest of it is really bad and no one uses that. I get it that they wanted to create a cohesive KDE ecosystem, but come on, even Google failed to do it, and KDE developers should not have even tried.

[WolframaticAlpha]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

You say "subpar" but... as far as I'm concerned Dolphin is the only truly complete GUI file manager.

Laughs in pcmanfm

[WolframaticAlpha]

19 hours ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

Just use your package manager commands to remove all that stuff (pacman -Rs konversation konqueror discover...  ). Save these commands as a bash script to do it in one click next time.

 

I completely agree, KDE should stop wasting time developing subpar apps which no one likes and concentrate on the desktop environment itself. But what can we do, we are not even paying for the development.

I reinstalled the whole thing(I also wanted to use the Zen kernel).

 

I found a script called the archdi script. Worked flawlessly. No bloat now.

 

 

[Sauron]

On 5/30/2021 at 9:36 PM, WolframaticAlpha said:

Laughs in pcmanfm

No good folder tree display unfortunately. Also not written in Qt, there is a port but it also is missing some features.

[WolframaticAlpha]

19 hours ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

Just use your package manager commands to remove all that stuff (pacman -Rs konversation konqueror discover...  ). Save these commands as a bash script to do it in one click next time.

 

I completely agree, KDE should stop wasting time developing subpar apps which no one likes and concentrate on the desktop environment itself. But what can we do, we are not even paying for the development.

Paying for KDE is quite noble. I suggest you donate to the FSF and Linux Foundation before KDE. More useful.

 

[WolframaticAlpha]

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

No good folder tree dispay unfortunately. Also not written in Qt, there is a port but it also is missing some features.

Wanna devolve into Qt Vs gtk?

AT least pcmanfm isn't as bloated and inefficient as Dolphin

[WolframaticAlpha]

On 5/29/2021 at 5:04 AM, Nayr438 said:

If your using Arch, The kde-applications group is a group of all available KDE applications. You installed those, KDE didn't just pull them.

KDE itself doesn't even come with a Terminal or File application by default. For the default KDE Package set, it's just "plasma".

If you don't wan't unnecessary packages, don't pull group or meta packages.

 

If your on another distro, that's entirely dependent on how the distro sets up it's packages.

 

Yeah, the thing is, KDE bundles some useful software in there. Unfortunately they throw in a shitload of bloat there too? Amy air alternatives that installs stuff like okular and konsole in a single package? Or do I have to hunt and type in each packages name?

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Wanna devolve into Qt Vs gtk?

AT least pcmanfm isn't as bloated and inefficient as Dolphin

Define "inefficient". If it doesn't do what I need then its efficiency is 0.

[WolframaticAlpha]

On 5/28/2021 at 11:54 PM, pythonmegapixel said:

Which distribution? If you use something Debian-based then you can pass Apt the the no-install-recommends flag, which means it will only install KDE and what it depends on, not what it "recommends".

 

  

They haven't. They said "everything but the essential progams".

Essential means absolutely required.

Thank you! I am using arch though, so need to find the pacman alternative for that flag

[WolframaticAlpha]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Define "inefficient". If it doesn't do what I need then its efficiency is 0.

Why so pedantic:)

 

 

If dolphin works for you, then great. Imo pcmanfm is superior. An argument over file mamnagers would be quite useless.

 

 

Have a nice day.

[Nayr438]

38 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Yeah, the thing is, KDE bundles some useful software in there. Unfortunately they throw in a shitload of bloat there too? Amy air alternatives that installs stuff like okular and konsole in a single package? Or do I have to hunt and type in each packages name?

You are supposed to pick through packages and install them along with their optional dependencies individually. The kde-applications package group itself basically just exists as a reference. I don't know of any alternative package groups for KDE Applications.

 

The simple solution is to use pamac-aur along with archlinux-appstream-data-pamac and sort by groups to find what you want.

 

Otherwise you can look through "https://archlinux.org/groups/x86_64/kde-applications/"

or you can also browse the meta groups for a more organized list, which is listed as dependencies at "https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/kde-applications-meta/"

or you can browse the "https://apps.kde.org/" for a general idea of what some of the applications are and search the repository with "pacman -Ss keywords"

[Giganthrax]

15 hours ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Laughs in pcmanfm

Not having a functional search is a deal breaker for me. 

 

The Thunar file manager from ZorinOS Lite is actually my favorite so far. 

[mjf]

Hi there. I have just done a fresh, no frills/bloat version of Debian 11... just the terminal. I am looking to install KDE Plasma as my desktop environment and I'll echo what has been said above...

sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop --no-install-recommends

Results in 1230 MB of space taken up.

sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop

Results in 2168 MB of space taken up. 

 

A massive difference!

[D-reaper]

On 5/28/2021 at 11:58 AM, WolframaticAlpha said:

I am installing arch on an old system to repurpose it. I was thinking of installing KDE, as it is easy for existing windows users, looks nice and is quite light(KDE Plasma Desktop vs Xfce Desktop - Resource Usage Comparison | 2020 Edition - YouTube)

I tried installing GNOME(40), but it was too foreign to the user. Uninstalled and start working again with a clean slate with Linux-zen instead of the standard linux kernel. I also needed to switch back to xorg since wayland was causing a ton of of problems on the GTX 275

After the xorg install, I started installing Plasma and the kde-apps. Little did I know it would so much crap. There was kgeography, kmoneymanager and whatnot. It took 15 whole minutes to install.

'

 

Long story short, KDE installed a ton of unneeded stuff.

 

My questions are:

Why is KDE so $%@# bloated?

How to remove everything but the non essential programs in one clean swoop(basically do a minimal install of KDE)?

 

 

 

 

You could just try out KDE Neon. That's a barebones distro. It's actually the staging ground for KDE.