How to install and remove KDE on Arch Linux

 So I was just playing around, I used to run KDE all the time (years ago) and thought I'd give it another try. 

Installation was easy:

sudo pacman -S xorg plasma plasma-wayland-session kde-applications

It turns out that KDE still isn't for me, it's a little slow and clunky for my 10 year old laptop, so I'll remove it. That's a little harder:

sudo pacman -Rns plasma plasma-wayland-session kde-applications

Didn't work. Notice I didn't include xorg, I probably didn't need it installed along with KDE since I already had it all installed. The problem was dependencies.

So I tried just uninstalling plasma:

sudo pacman -Rns plasma plasma-wayland-session

Nope:

error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing libksysguard breaks dependency 'libksysguard' required by kdevelop
:: removing plasma-workspace breaks dependency 'plasma-workspace' required by kget
:: removing libkscreen breaks dependency 'libkscreen' required by lxqt-config
:: removing plasma-workspace breaks dependency 'plasma-workspace' required by telepathy-kde-desktop-applets

 

So I'll just remove kdevelop:

danson@deadlock:~$ sudo pacman -Rns kdevelop
checking dependencies...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing kdevelop breaks dependency 'kdevelop' required by kdevelop-php
 

Okay, I'll just remove kdevelop-php:

danson@deadlock:~$ sudo pacman -Rns kdevelop-php
checking dependencies...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing kdevelop-php breaks dependency 'kdevelop-php' required by umbrello

So remove umbrello: Yep! And it removed kdevelop and kdevelop-php at the same time!
danson@deadlock:~$ sudo pacman -Rns umbrello

Try to remove plasma again:

danson@deadlock:~$ sudo pacman -Rns plasma plasma-wayland-session
checking dependencies...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing plasma-workspace breaks dependency 'plasma-workspace' required by kget
:: removing libkscreen breaks dependency 'libkscreen' required by lxqt-config
:: removing plasma-workspace breaks dependency 'plasma-workspace' required by telepathy-kde-desktop-applets

Okay, so whack kget: Yep!
danson@deadlock:~$ sudo pacman -Rns kget

Try plasma again:

danson@deadlock:~$ sudo pacman -Rns plasma plasma-wayland-session
checking dependencies...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing libkscreen breaks dependency 'libkscreen' required by lxqt-config
:: removing plasma-workspace breaks dependency 'plasma-workspace' required by telepathy-kde-desktop-applets
danson@deadlock:~$ sudo pacman -Rns telepathy-kde-desktop-applets

That worked, also removed lxqt-config, then reinstalled it, since I'm going to be running lqxt.

Now plasma goes away!

danson@deadlock:~$ sudo pacman -Rns plasma plasma-wayland-session

Reinstall lxqt-config:

danson@deadlock:~$ sudo pacman -S lxqt-config

And finally remove the KDE application packages:

danson@deadlock:~$ sudo pacman -Rns kde-applications

That's it. Not particularly straightforward, but easy enough to get all this stuff off of my laptop.