HI. Using the DVD, what is the best way to install just one Desktop environment without having to answer yes/no questions as it warns? I want a close to pure KDE only system. No XFCE libraries nor GNOME ones if I can help it?

You can't really kill off what's in Slackware now without removing a dependency for something.

Actually you can. You should just be careful what you remove, a dependency that xfce4 uses doesn't necessarily mean it won't be used by other programs/packages, but some of the packages are standalone and generally won't affect usage whether you remove it or not. I've personally removed several packages myself. If I install a new package and it seems to be missing a library, it'll usually say so like which you can look up with "slackpkg file-search lib.something.so" and it'll give you the package that has that required dependency.

I think what you're looking for may be the "expert" or "menu" option (whichever one says "these are the same"). They go through the package groups (e.g. A, AP, KDE, X, XAP, etc.) and ask which packages you would like to install from that package group. Picking and choosing from that menu is easier for me (personally). By your description, it sounds like you're using the one-by-one option (the one that says "The X series takes a whole year" or whatever) which does take quite some time.

With the exception of KDE (which is of course, in the KDE package series), the other desktop environments/window managers are generally in X or XAP (except fvwm which I think is in extras). Their short description is usually enough to identify them, e.g. "such-and-such is a lightweight window manager" or "such-and-such is a lightweight window manager based off of <other window manager>" and other similar descriptions. Off the top of my head, the window managers/desktop environments that are in Slackware: fluxbox, fvwm, twm, xfce4, windowmaker and blackbox. I'm sure I'm missing something.

The other option is to install a minimal Slackware (minimal as in number of packages). There are several people who have posted on these forums about what packages they installed from which package series. Then, you can just use the "slackpkg file-search" option above (assuming you installed slackpkg of course), to get something you need if something goes awry.

It's pretty easy to remove KDE without affecting other desktop environments and window managers, but it is harder to remove Gnome libraries since a lot of software (that generally has nothing to do with Gnome) depends on it. Slackware pretty much has as few Gnome dependencies as you can get away with already (though that will probably change with future Slackware releases because of increased Gnome library dependencies in XFCE). You should be able to exclude XFCE if you want. Choosing the expert mode during setup allows you to select/deselect entire package sets as well as packages within those sets. I think if you want KDE then you will probably only be able to exclude certain DEs/WMs specifically -- there aren't many WM/DE-specific libraries that aren't used by other applications (for example, excluding GTK+ 2 is just asking for trouble). The other DEs/WMs in Slackware take up a fraction of the space that KDE does, so while I can understand the desire to exclude KDE from XFCE-only installations, for example, I really do not understand the motivation behind excluding XFCE from a KDE setup (except as an exercise in futility).

If you're new to Slackware I suggest that you do a full install and everything will work properly out of the box; you will have a nice KDE install with all dependencies met. Yes, that will also give you Xfce and a lot of other stuff, but, you will be up and running. We prefer to support a full install for newcomers as it makes it easier to trouble-shoot things. Once you're up and running you can remove packages that you do not want and note what happens as a result.

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I would echo what hitest says in his post. Life will be much easier for you if you just do a standard full install. Even if you decide not to use the "extra" software packages you've installed, they really won't hurt anything, except using a little more disk space. In Slackware, services only run if you enable them, so if you don't use it, it won't take up any memory.

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The answer already given is "yes, you can", the easiest and fastest way to do that being IMHO:
1) Make a full installation
2) Remove afterwards what you don't want.

For step 2) I would use the slackpkg utility (included in a full install), this way:
where <something> can be either a single package or a set of packages. To know more type "man slackpkg" in a terminal in your shiny new Slackware.

Just be informed that:
- a full installation will use some more disk space (dunno exactly how much, but my guess would be "less than 2 giga bytes")
- regardless what you installed, you can set up your system to start either directly in kdm, or in a console from where the 'startx' command will launch KDE
- there won't be any increase or decrease in performance doing a full install
- if you don't make a full installation some apps may not work, depending on which packages you excluded, as already stated by others

Whatever you choose to do, I wish you the best using Slackware.

In addition to the points above, if you are planning to use slackbuilds.org to build and install third-party software, then you should have a full Slackware installation because the scripts there assume a full installation.

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