Hi, I've just bought a new computer with RHEL WS4 on it. I'm a KDE user, and I'm trying to rid myself of GNOME (mainly so I get fewer updates). The only trouble is, I can't work out how to uninstall anything.

rpm -e gnome-desktop throws up all sorts of dependency errors, so I'm a little stuck. Is up2date capable of removing packages as well as installing them?

Uninstalling all of Gnome is possible but it takes a lot of work including building custom rpm packages for firefox, thunderbird and a lot of additional packages. I like and use kde instead of gnome myself. Question: you had a chance to install mosty KDE without a lot of the gnome packages install when you installed the OS, why did skip this step???

You should be getting used to yum and purit (the next version of RHEL will be using these). So as a suggestion visit Deg Wieers's site and install the rpmfore-release package along with yum;

http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/FAQ.php#B
http://dag.wieers.com/packages/yum/

Then you can do something like; yum remove gnome-desktop

.

Alas, it's because I bought the computer with the OS preinstalled (not entirely by choice mind you... it's a work computer, and given the option, I wouldn't have chosen Red Hat!). I'm also loathed to do a reinstall, because I've got far too much else to do.

Ah, I thought that might be the response. Thanks - I just assumed that RHEL would have come with a better package manager given how much we're paying for it! I'm quite comfortable using yum already, but I don't really want to install it as we're paying shedloads for a subscription to guarantee stability and I don't really want to do anything that might jeopardise stability. Besides, I've already had enough trouble installing hplip and openoffice 2 (but only a 32bit version) manually, so if I can avoid installing anything else, I will do.

Thanks for the help.

I do understand, but as an FYI the next release of RHEL will use yum as an update tool and is looking nice (I'm running it now, the Beta that is). Looks like you need to do it the hard way if you really do not want the Gnome desktop, the package management tool should allow you to remove the desktop; system-config-packages