[SOLVED] Can I #yum remove gnome@desktop LXDE@desktop?

[NikolaZ]

This is my first experience with Linux, so I tried several different shells with f16. Now I am set on using KDE only, and would like to remove LXDE and GNOME 3. What is the exact code to do that safely??

Will all of my Gnome programs dissapear as well? I don't mind really, I would just like to keep Document Viewer because Okular has a weird bug in full screen mode.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Gareth Jones]

Removing LXDE should work.

GNOME integrates quite tightly with the Fedora system, and removing it will remove some fairly core packages and anything that depends on them (such as parts of KDE). You could run a Yum groupinstall of KDE after removing GNOME to get KDE and all the core packages it needs back, as well as installing evince (the GNOME document viewer) if you still want that.

It's probably not worth the effort of trying to remove GNOME if you have KDE working, especially if you want to keep any of the applications – they depend on most of GNOME. There are a few packages you could remove if you don't actually log into GNOME (e.g. gnome-shell), but it's hardly worth it for the tiny space-savings. Just choose KDE next time you install.

[NikolaZ]

Thank you for the reply. I will just leave it as it is then.

My system takes forever to boot (almost 2 minutes), so I thought that removing the extra shells might speed it up a bit. But maybe I just set it up the wrong way during installation. It's dual boot with windows, so I had to do manual patition, without actually knowing anything about it.

[Gareth Jones]

Originally Posted by NikolaZ

My system takes forever to boot (almost 2 minutes), so I thought that removing the extra shells might speed it up a bit. But maybe I just set it up the wrong way during installation. It's dual boot with windows, so I had to do manual patition, without actually knowing anything about it.

Neither installed shells nor partitioning are likely to affect boot-times significantly. What hardware are you running on? There is a tool for profiling the boot process with systemd mentioned in some other posts about slow boot-times, which might help pin-down what's causing the slow-down, so it may be worth searching for other threads.

[BBQdave]

Originally Posted by NikolaZ

This is my first experience with Linux, so I tried several different shells with f16. Now I am set on using KDE only, and would like to remove LXDE and GNOME 3. What is the exact code to do that safely??

Will all of my Gnome programs dissapear as well? I don't mind really, I would just like to keep Document Viewer because Okular has a weird bug in full screen mode.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Just as Gareth Jones said, your fine to leave it as is.

You could back up your data and do a fresh install of F16 KDE. You may have to add software that is not native to KDE (applications that you liked in Gnome 3). You can easily add software using the ADD/REMOVE SOFTWARE application.

A fresh install of F16 KDE would give you the Desktop Environment (DE) you want, with out the clutter of the other DE's you tried.

[NikolaZ]

Originally Posted by Gareth Jones

Neither installed shells nor partitioning are likely to affect boot-times significantly. What hardware are you running on? There is a tool for profiling the boot process with systemd mentioned in some other posts about slow boot-times, which might help pin-down what's causing the slow-down, so it may be worth searching for other threads.

Thanks for the info. I am using Compaq Presario CQ40, about 2.2 Ghz, 1 GB Ram.
Not a great laptop, but it loads Windows in about 20 sec. I will try to look for the boot-up profiler and see what's going on.
In the long run I plan to just use linux so I will probably do a fresh installation when 17 stable comes out and they smooth out the initial bugs.

[george_toolan]

There's your culprit

free

I would suggest to upgrade the memory to 2 or 4 GiB if possible.

You don't have to know much about partitions. Any 10+ GiB partition will do for Fedora, but it's probably at the very end of the drive where it's slowest.

fdisk -l /dev/sda

[NikolaZ]

Thank you for the code George. These are the results:

[Gordan@localhost ~]$ sudo free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1996584 1374628 621956 0 48656 756344
-/+ buffers/cache: 569628 1426956
Swap: 8601596 0 8601596


[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00027579

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 206848 204802047 102297600 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 204802048 430082047 112640000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 430082048 488396799 29157376 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 430086144 471046143 20480000 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 471048192 488251391 8601600 82 Linux swap / Solaris

So, if I am reading this correctly LInux is in the last thre partitions and I don't have too much free space in the memory for Linux partitions?

Is there anything I can do to boost performance before I do a complete reinstall? If I just do a fresh reinstall and wipe out Windows, do I still need to upgrade Ram to 2-4 GB, or will the boot already run significantly faster?

Thanks, I really appreciate everybody's help on this.

Niko

PS. When I write the message numbers are neatly separated in the columns, but after I post they all get jumbled together. Can you still understand the results?

[Gareth Jones]

Originally Posted by NikolaZ

[Gordan@localhost ~]$ sudo free
                 total               used           free                shared       buffers     cached
Mem:       1996584        1374628   621956                0             48656       756344
-/+ buffers/cache:         569628    1426956
Swap:      8601596        0              8601596

That suggests that you have closer to 2 GiB of RAM than 1 GiB, and not all used. No swap is being used so your aren't running out of RAM, although the system would probably be more responsive in use with more RAM as it could buffer and cache more.

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sda

[...]

   Device Boot      Start        End              Blocks        Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048        206847         102400          7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2          206848      204802047   102297600    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3       204802048   430082047   112640000    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       430082048   488396799    29157376     5  Extended
/dev/sda5       430086144   471046143    20480000     83  Linux
/dev/sda6       471048192   488251391     8601600      82  Linux swap / Solaris

So, if I am reading this correctly LInux is in the last thre partitions and I don't have too much free space in the memory for Linux partitions?

Yes, Linux is installed in sda5, and sda6 is your swap partition. Both are logical partitions inside the sda4 primary/extended partition.

If I just do a fresh reinstall and wipe out Windows, do I still need to upgrade Ram to 2-4 GB, or will the boot already run significantly faster?

In general more RAM would help, but I don't think it's the source of your slow boot, nor is the presence of Windows an issue. If you do repartition when reinstalling, I'd recommend separate partitions for /boot (<= 1 GiB), / (10–15 GiB), swap (2 x RAM if you want hibernate to work well), and /home (all remaining space). Having a separate /home makes it easier to reinstall or upgrade without interfering with personal files. This won't affect boot-speed though.

PS. When I write the message numbers are neatly separated in the columns, but after I post they all get jumbled together. Can you still understand the results?

They become un-jumbled in the quote-reply window.

It's best to use [ CODE ][ /CODE ] tags (without the spaces) for terminal output and text file quotes make the forum use a fixed-width font. The '#' button in the advanced post mode is a short-cut for that.

[NikolaZ]

Thanks for all the useful information, it will come in handy when I reinstall everything.

Best,

Niko