How do I update while maintaining a minimal desktop?

[Dave Rove]

So is it that these upgrades rely on the respective metapackage? In the case of Kubuntu, it maybe "kubuntu-desktop".

They're not dependencies of kubuntu-desktop but they are "recommends". So maybe that's what's happening? The recommended packages of kubuntu-desktop are being installed?

Anyway, following your suggestion on Reddit, I've simply removed stuff.

Before upgrading, I found that no installed package contained the substring "akonadi" or "game". So after the upgrade, I just ran sudo apt purge *akonadi* *game* which removed 74 packages (171MB) then sudo apt autoremove removed a further 51 packages (111MB). That did seem to work fine, removing nearly all the extraneous packages and not breaking anything that I could find.

Before the upgrade, I had 8.7GB used space, after the upgrade it was 9.6GB, then after purging packages it was 9.0GB. Good enough.

Edit: BTW, answering my other question in the original post, the -f DistUpgradeViewKDE option creates a popup that presents the upgrade as progress bars for each stage.

[chimak111]

A user on Ubuntu Mate reports something similar: packages not in the minimal option are found after upgrading to 18.10: https://askubuntu.com/a/1085203

So is it that these upgrades rely on the respective metapackage? In the case of Kubuntu, it maybe "kubuntu-desktop".

[v7peer]

Desktop and Server have nothing to do with Plasma, but the type of system.

You will still be at a minimal install if that's what you started with. It will only upgrade the components you have installed. You will see it install some new things that are dependencies, but it will also remove some old bits that are no longer used.

Sent from my LG-H931 using Tapatalk

Unfortunately this is not true. I noticed that the 18.10 update installed extra software. I had to remove some games, kmail, ktorrent konversation and some other components.

[claydoh]

Desktop and Server have nothing to do with Plasma, but the type of system.

You will still be at a minimal install if that's what you started with. It will only upgrade the components you have installed. You will see it install some new things that are dependencies, but it will also remove some old bits that are no longer used.

Sent from my LG-H931 using Tapatalk

[Dave Rove]

When I installed Kubuntu 18.04, I selected the "minimal desktop" install option, which for example, doesn't install Akonadi or any of the packages that depend on it.

sudo do-release-upgrade updates to 18.10's full desktop with akonadi, games and stuff that I don't want. I've restored 18.04 from backup.

do-release-upgrade --help shows that there's an "-m" flag with options "desktop" and "server" but no "minimal".

Also, what is the effect of -f DistUpgradeViewKDE which is mentioned in some help guides for updating Kubuntu? I didn't use it when I made the update attempt, but it had no problem in updating the KDE desktop, albeit to the full-fat desktop.

How do I maintain the "minimal" desktop option? Any ideas, please?