Re: What else must I do to avoid installing "suggests"? Was: How to get a "minimal font set"?

[Kynn Jones <kynnjo@gmail.com>]

Thank you for all your comments and suggestions.

My interest in this question stems from the fact that I'm getting
ready to do a full reinstallation of my system, and I don't want to
repeat my previous mistakes.

My concern is that the unwanted packages could have landed in my hard
drive when the system was first installed, even though I kept my
choices at the time very minimalistic.  (E.g. whatever the Debian
installer uses for installing packages has the equivalent of
`APT::Install-Suggests "1"` or `APT::Install-Recommends "1"`.)

On closer inspection, the fraction of unwanted fonts that I got
through chains of recommends is more substantial than that for chains
containing suggests.  And

    % apt-config dump | grep -i -e suggest -e recommend
    APT::Install-Recommends "1";
    APT::Install-Suggests "0";

The config for recommends looks like one of the holes I need to plug.
(I'm not sure where it's coming from; I certainly did not set it
explicitly.  I suppose I can negate it through /etc/apt/apt.conf.)

The packages that `aptitude why` shows as being installed due to
chains containing suggests remain a mystery.  It could be a quirk (or
bug) in `aptitude why` (e.g. for those packages there may be *other*
reasons for their being installed that are based solely on
recommends).

Thank you all again!

kj