On 2016-02-25 at 08:45, Keith Christian wrote: > Running Debian Jessie on a non-critical system at home. Wanted to > use xine-ui instead of vlc as a video player, since there appeared to > be some sort of conflict. > > Ran aptitude -y purge vlc to do the obvious. 116 packages were > removed, most of the core of KDE. > > Why were so many other packages dependent on vlc? 116 removals just > to get rid of one package is quite alot! The chain of dependencies is: kde-runtime -> phonon -> phonon-backend | phonon-backend-vlc -> vlc However, the 'backend' step in this chain is a virtual package; the packages which provide it are phonon-backend-vlc, phonon-backend-gstreamer, and phonon-backend-null. (The VLC alternative is listed explicitly first in the phonon dependencies, which is why you get that unless you specifically specify one of the others.) If you install either the GStreamer or the NULL backend before purging vlc, you should be able to avoid this massive removal set. > I have the complete aptitude purge log in a file on disk so the > names are readily available, but, there must be a more efficient way > to reinstall the 116 packages. > > Is there a KDE meta-package that will install the majority of KDE > that was removed? At first blush, you might try task-kde-desktop; that's what gets used if you tell the Debian installer to install the KDE desktop as part of initial system setup. I don't know if there are suitable metapackages other than that, but you might be best off with a manual install action based on the packages listed in your log file. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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