Q4OS Forum

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Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,333

Switching off installation of recommended packages by default

During installation of apps Synaptic defaults to installing 'recommended' packages.
Whilst this is sometimes helpful, it can also result in an avalanche of seemingly unconnected packages.
If you want to see what I mean go to synaptic and select gwenview-trinity - then take a look at the steaming heap of extras - some of which may be useful - but if I want kmail, I'll install it thank you.
By comparison sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gwenview-trinity gives me 2 packages, plus one suggested and one recommended.

In apt.conf.d you can set this behaviour in a specific file - say 80q4os
// disable recommends & suggests
APT::Install-Recommends "0";
APT::Install-Suggests "0";

along with amending 99synaptic
APT::Install-Recommends "false";

I'm not saying this is a universal solution, but wonder if there is a way it can be incorporated into a click-able option so that those who are not too comfy at the command line can install what is needed rather than all the extra stuff they don't need?

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,501

Website

Re: Switching off installation of recommended packages by default

Yes, it is a handy option and is already available in Synaptic. Just go to Settings/Preferences, and on the General-tab unmark "Consider recommended packages as dependencies".