3

I use the Breeze icon theme and want to uninstall the others.

However, when I try, there are loads of other dependencies being removed.

e.g. humanity-icon-theme

sudo apt-get remove humanity-icon-theme
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  adwaita-icon-theme-full
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  humanity-icon-theme ubuntu-mono
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  adwaita-icon-theme-full
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 2 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 8,429 kB of archives.
After this operation, 3,985 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.
  • Why is mono being removed when I am removing an icon theme?
  • Why is another package being added when I am removing a package?

Is there a hierarchy in these themes and they build on each other or something?

Another example: adwaita-icon-theme

sudo apt-get remove adwaita-icon-theme
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  gnome-icon-theme
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  gnome-icon-theme
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  adwaita-icon-theme firefox gtk2-engines-pixbuf gtk3-engines-breeze humanity-icon-theme kde-config-gtk-style kde-config-gtk-style-preview libgail-common libgail18 libgtk-3-0
  libgtk-3-bin libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-bin libscim8v5 plasma-desktop ubuntu-mono
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gnome-icon-theme
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 16 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 9,618 kB of archives.
After this operation, 157 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.

This is more extreme and is removing firefox and the whole plasma-desktop!

Why are these other packages depending on specific icon themes?

muru
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opticyclic
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1 Answers1

3

Your question is a bit broad. But I am answering it anyway.

Case 1: When tried to remove humanity-icon-theme

You have two questions for this case. First one is

  • Why is mono being removed when I am removing an icon theme?

ubuntu-mono is being removed while you were trying to remove humanity-icon-theme because, ubuntu-mono depends on humanity-icon-theme package. The rule is, removing a package upon which other packages depend, will trigger removal of those dependent packages too.

You can see it from apt-cache depends ubuntu-mono command

→ apt-cache depends ubuntu-mono
ubuntu-mono
  Depends: adwaita-icon-theme
  Depends: hicolor-icon-theme
  Depends: humanity-icon-theme

It's clearly seen that ubuntu-mono depends on humanity-icon-theme.

Your second question on this case was

  • Why is another package being added when I am removing a package?

adwaita-icon-theme-full was going to be installed while you were trying to remove humanity-icon-theme.

The theory for apt is: If some important packages depend on a package which is going to be removed, look for some other packages that has same functionality of this soon-to-be-removed package and try to install it.

And that is happening here. You were removing humanity-icon-theme, but some packages needed it. So, what to do? Look for other packages that does the job of humanity-icon-theme. Apt found that it can be adwaita-icon-theme-full, so it selects it for installation.

Case 2: While trying to remove adwaita-icon-theme

You asked why firefox and other packages going to be removed while you were removing only the icon theme. The reason is same. This package somehow, even through a long chain depends on adwaita-icon-theme. So, trying to remove this will trigger removal of those dependent packages.

For example, firefox depends on libgtk-3-0, which depends on libgtk-3-common, which in turn depends on adwaita-icon-theme. So, Though Firefox doesn't directly depend on the icon theme, but it's needed by some dependencies of it. (You can verify this by using apt-cache depends packagename command syntax)

Same answer can be given for question why gnome-icon-theme is being installed here.

Hope that helps.

OP asked in comment

I don't understand why the packages would depend on a specific theme though. Isn't the point of themes that they can be changed?

Yes, depending on a specific theme is bad. But also a graphical desktop environment needs some sort of icon right? If no icon is needed for a DE, how would it render icons and themes component? That's why every DE specifies a default/fallback icon themes for it. For GNOME, it is adwaita-icon-theme. So, if you remove it, GNOME applications might give you a good bye too! In my system, when I issued command to remove it, it tried to remove 346 packages.

But other than these defaults, you can add and remove any other theme packages.

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Anwar
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