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I've been trying for several days to optimize my KDE with Debian 12 bookworm, adjusting various settings and removing some programs that I don't actually need.

I tried to uninstall the Konqueror browser because I only want to use Firefox and Dolphin. But when I try to do it via the GUI or a shell, the system shows it wants to remove additional packages I don't want to delete.

Why can't Konqueror simply be removed without removing other packages?

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  • You can't just delete Konqueror in KDE without causing problems or breaking your system Commented Jun 21 at 16:23
  • what do you mean? Commented Jun 21 at 16:26
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    @ReflectYourCharacter No, KDE absolutely works just fine without Konqueror. Debian just happens to package things in such a way that you get a ‘full’ install of KDE with a vast majority of the apps when you install KDE through one of the top level metapackages. But you don’t actually need kde-baseapps for a working KDE install as long as you pull in the handful of things that truly are needed (like Dolphin and your choice of terminal emulator). Commented Jun 22 at 12:17
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    @Austin Hemmelgarn In a truly minimal and manual installation, that might be possible, but not with the standard installation. The question is whether that's enough for the OP, since there are still other programs and packages involved, currently depending on Konqueror, I'd say. I had the same issue in the past when I tried hardening my system(Debian with KDE), It's not just Konqueror, there are other programs that could also cause issues if you try to uninstall them and I've since switched to GNOME. After all, even Tails uses GNOME as its desktop. :) Commented Jun 22 at 14:25
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    @ReflectYourCharacter I reiterate, this is Debian’s packaging, not something inherent to KDE. Konqueror is not an actual dependency (runtime or otherwise) of any part of KDE, it’s just a part of the KDE suite that the KDE team for some reason still considers a core application for the platform, and thus the Debian maintainers insist must be installed as part of a ‘standard’ KDE install. In fact, this applies to everything pulled in by the kde-baseapps package on Debian (you generally do want something fitting each of the the types of apps it pulls in, but it doesn’t need to be that exact set). Commented Jun 22 at 16:00

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Konqueror and some other programs often cannot be easily uninstalled on Debian with KDE because they are tightly integrated with essential KDE components.

If you remove them, critical packages like kde-plasma-desktop or kde-baseapps might also be affected, which could break your desktop environment.

Debian prevents this to ensure system stability. If you don’t want to use Konqueror, you can simply ignore it.

It’s like a core part of the KDE system for smooth operation.

konqueror is a strong dependency of kde-baseapps, itself a strong dependency of kde-plasma-desktop, itself a strong dependency of kde-standard, itself a strong dependency of task-kde-desktop; it is a also a strong dependency of konq-plugins. So removing konqueror causes all those packages to be removed through cascading dependency removal...

If you ever mess up your KDE/desktop, it's happened to me too, you can simply reinstall KDE as explained in this post:

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    You can, but you will also have to stop using KDE. Commented Jun 21 at 21:28
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    @user10489 that's incorrect. You can use firefox under KDE without problems. The only difficulty is if you also want to actually uninstall konqueror. Uninstalling that on debian will also remove kde-baseapps, which will cause a whole bunch of other kde packages to be flagged for auto-removal (because they were auto-installed as a kde-baseapps dependency). To avoid that, either don't uninstall konqueror (easy!) or use apt-mark manual to mark all the packages you don't want to be flagged for removal. IMO just leave konqueror installed, it doesn't take too much space and it's easy to ignore Commented Jun 22 at 12:05
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    Right, it's just a packaging issue—your statement that Konqueror can't be removed because it's "tightly integrated with essential KDE components" is incorrect. Konqueror is not tightly integrated with essential KDE components; Debian has merely set up its package dependencies as if it were. Commented Jun 22 at 14:25
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    What's not correct? That you can run KDE without Konqueror is unequivocal fact, and Kubuntu is living proof. The answer to the OP's question—why can't I remove Konqueror?—is not "because it's tightly integrated," it's "because the Debian maintainers set up the dependencies that way" (IMO, a bug). The practical solution is to file a bug with Debian or switch distros. Commented Jun 22 at 14:37
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    I wouldn't call it a bug. I'd call it a design choice, one which works for most KDE users who actually want konqueror, and is harmless to others. The whole point of the kde-baseapps is that it depends/recommends a bunch of "standard" KDE apps so they get automatically installed. Anyone who really doesn't want konqueror installed can put in some effort with apt-mark manual or just manually installing the subset of KDE packages they do want. IMO that would be mostly-pointless work with little return on effort expended, but there's nothing stopping you from doing that if you want. Commented Jun 22 at 15:28
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It IS possible to remove konqueror in Debian. The Debian maintainers removed the hard dependency later on in Debian Experimental from kde-baseapps. You can add the repository by adding /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources in the deb822 format and removing the old /etc/apt/sources.list, but be sure to keep a backup in case sudo apt update fails:

# Modernized from /etc/apt/sources.list
Types: deb deb-src # deb-src optional
URIs: http://deb.debian.org/debian/
Suites: bookworm experimental # Note this part
Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware # contrib, non-free, non-free-firmware optional
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg
Architectures: amd64 i386 # use your architectures

Now you can upgrade the kde-baseapps package with sudo apt -t experimental install kde-baseapps --no-install-recommends and remove konqueror. Be sure to thoroughly check what apt wants to install, upgrade, or remove, and to have full control, I recommend using aptitude's TUI to handle complex operations.

Please note, it is dangerous to mix bookworm and experimental packages as you can create a FrankenDebian.

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    For experimenting and trying things out, you can do that. But if you're developing and running your business on Debian 12 + KDE, I would never recommend taking packages from experimental. As @cas and I said, Konqueror isn’t a problem, you can simply ignore it. If you want to harden your client and have more security, XFCE and then GNOME are the better choices. And I’m not badmouthing KDE, I’ve been using the KDE desktop for years myself. Commented Jun 23 at 18:10
  • I did see how kdepim was set to be a hard dependency in Debian Experimental's kde-standard, so a few more packages such as kmail will be required: metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/m/meta-kde/… Commented Jun 23 at 20:56
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Because the title is more generic than the description is, I'll answer that:

Why can't I remove some programs in KDE?

The "why" is merely that the packagers have made the package that you wish to uninstall a hard dependency of whatever meta-package provides much of the desktop environment. This is distribution and repository-specific, even though upstream KDE does provide a basic dependency tree for downstream package managers to consume.

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First off, you can definitely use Firefox as your default browser, even if Konquerer is installed. This would be the easiest solution. Debian has a wiki page about setting default browsers, where it says

Under System Settings > Applications > Default Applications > Web Browser, change the "Open http and https URLs" setting to "in the following application" and choose your preferred browser from the dropdown list, then apply the change.

And also suggests running the command:

update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

As for why it wanted to uninstall other packages to uninstall Konqueror, this is because you had installed KDE via a metapackage. You can change which packages and metapackages are "automatically installed", or regularly installed, so that you can uninstall Konqueror without removing other KDE things you want to keep.

Debian has a number of metapackages for installing KDE:

  • task-kde-desktop: the task- packages are intended to be chosen during initial system installation. This one depends on tasksel, task-desktop, kde-standard, and sddm.
  • kde-standard: this depends on kde-plasma-desktop, polkit-kde-agent-1, and a number of apps and addons
  • kde-plasma-desktop: this is yet another metapackage, and depends on kde-baseapps, plasma-desktop, plasma-workspace, udisks2, and upower
  • kde-baseapps: this depends on Konqueror and some other apps
  • plasma-desktop: this is the package for KDE's Plasma Desktop, despite having a similar name to kde-plasma-desktop

So on Debian 12, to not have Konqueror installed, you can't have the metapackages kde-baseapps, kde-plasma-desktop, kde-standard, or task-kde-desktop installed, but you can have as many of their dependencies installed as you like, including plasma-desktop.

Packages can be installed normally, or marked as being automatically installed. When you remove a package, some of its dependencies might be removed if they're marked as automatically installed. When I want to keep something from being uninstalled, I usually use aptitude:

sudo aptitude unmarkauto the-package-name
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  • sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-www-browser x-www-browser /usr/bin/[new browser] [some priority higher than konquerer] can be used to easily make a browser the default in one command too. Commented Jul 5 at 1:57

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