On Sat, 27 Dec 2014, Greg Madden wrote:

> On Friday 26 December 2014 10:32:50 pm you wrote:
>> greets!
>>
>> I just did a dist-upgrade (to R14 Jessie; exegnu) somewhat
>> incorrectly, it made a lot of changes I hadn't intended but that's
>> user error for the most part. one error was not filtering out stuff I
>> consider junk, for instance 'games'.
>>
>> I thought I'd try purging them the so-called easy way using kpackage
>> but when I get set to remove kdegames-trinity, it _looks_ like
>> tde-trinity will go along it. I know this has to do with
>> 'meta-packages' but I don't understand the implications.
>>
>> one gets the same result from apt-get.
>>
>> I'm happy, happier in fact, to do all of this using apt-get (or
>> aptitude). I'd love a magical incantation or rather guidance on how to
>> formulate one to remove this junk:
>>
>> games
>> edutainment
>> education
>> science
>>
>> f.
>
>
> The meta-package 'tde-trinity'  includes quite a few other 'meta--packages' as
> depends. Use 'apt-cache depends tde-trinity' to view them.
>
> You can safely remove 'meta-packages'...start with 'tde-trinity' since it
> pulls in a 'full' TDE desktop enviroment.

so this is precisely what I don't understand. if so much depends on a 
meta-package, how can it be safe to remove the meta-package? there are 
dependencies here that I definitely do not want to remove. does 
removal of a meta-package leave the dependent apps intact?

> For a slim install I start with 'tdebase-trinity' , and add as needed.

this was intended to be an upgrade, not a fresh install. in fact, 
after some fumbling, it worked and I have the apps I used to have 
though I had to apt-get a couple of times for fresher versions.


-- 
Felmon Davis

The first is to ensure your partner understands that nature has root
privileges - nature doesn't have to make sense.
 		-- Telsa Gwynne