I've been trying Tumbleweed for my gaming needs and so far it seems to be working relatively well. My issue is about removed packages. When I first installed TW, I removed quite a few packages I did not want (KSudoku, LibreOffice, and a few others). It has been a little since I've turned on my PC but yesterday I noticed that KSudoku, LibreOffice, and really all other apps I thought I had uninstalled (sudo zypper remove <package-name>) were back on my desktop. I thought "maybe I forgot to uninstalled them in the first place" so I went through and removed all the unwanted stuff again. Since it had been awhile I updated my OS right after uninstalling those packages. After the update (sudo zypper up), I rebooted and immediately noticed that all those packages I had just removed were back (AGAIN). So WTF... am I not removing those unwanted packages "properly"? Why do they keep coming back after updates? How can I prevent this?
Patterns almost made me skip opensuse, until I locked most of them so they won't annoy me anymore.
I start with only selecting some basic patterns in the installer:
apparmor
base
documentation
enhanced_base
minimal_base
sw_management
x86_64_v3
When installed, I run this in my fresh system:
# save the currently installed patterns in a variable
installedPatterns=$(zypper se --type pattern --installed-only | grep -E "(.*\|){3}" | cut -d'|' -f2 | tail -n+2)
# lock every existing pattern
sudo zypper addlock --type pattern $(zypper search --type pattern | grep -E "(.*\|){3}" | cut -d'|' -f2 | tail -n+2)
# lock every package starting with "yast"
sudo zypper addlock yast*
# unlock the patterns you had installed
sudo zypper removelock --type pattern $installedPatterns
Pro:
Only real dependencies get installed when adding packages
Nothing re-installs because it belongs to an installed pattern
No need for --no-recommends
Con:
You have to find out the packages you need yourself
For a minimal gnome install, use these packages (likely some more depending on you setup):