If I don't use KDE why does updating download lots of kde packages?

Question

I have the following environments installed-

1. Gnome(NE,Classic,normal)
2. Unity(3D,2D)
3. Cinnamon
4. Enlightment
5. Cairo(all combinations)

There is no KDE. But I still got more than 90MB of KDE updates. And I don't see any suspicious repo or PPA.

How can I find out which repo is giving me this so that I can purge or atleast unmark it for not updating?

Answer 1

Found it from your package history!

You installed Kile - LaTeX front end for KDE, that integrates many tools needed to develop documents with LaTeX, in just one application.

Kile pulls all the packages below. BTW, this answer has a command-line way of getting a chronological list of the packages you have installed, in case you want to find something like this in the future.

---

 docbook-xml docbook-xsl dvipng icoutils imagemagick imagemagick-common
  kate-data katepart kde-runtime kde-runtime-data kdelibs-bin kdelibs5-data
  kdelibs5-plugins kdoctools konsole kubuntu-debug-installer lacheck
  latex-beamer latex-xcolor libattica0.3 libcdt4 libclucene0ldbl
  libdlrestrictions1 libgif4 libgraph4 libgvc5 libilmbase6
  libkatepartinterfaces4 libkcmutils4 libkde3support4 libkdeclarative5
  libkdecore5 libkdesu5 libkdeui5 libkdewebkit5 libkdnssd4 libkemoticons4
  libkfile4 libkhtml5 libkidletime4 libkio5 libkjsapi4 libkjsembed4
  libkmediaplayer4 libknewstuff3-4 libknotifyconfig4 libkntlm4 libkonq-common
  libkonq5-templates libkonq5abi1 libkparts4 libkpty4 libkrosscore4
  libktexteditor4 liblqr-1-0 libmagickcore4 libmagickcore4-extra
  libmagickwand4 libnepomuk4 libnepomukdatamanagement4 libnepomukquery4a
  libnepomuksync4 libnepomukutils4 libnetpbm10 libntrack-qt4-1 libntrack0
  libopenexr6 libpathplan4 libphonon4 libplasma3 libpolkit-qt-1-1
  libqapt-runtime libqapt1 libqca2 libqt4-designer libqt4-qt3support
  libqtwebkit4 libsolid4 libsoprano4 libstreamanalyzer0 libstreams0
  libthreadweaver4 libvirtodbc0 libxml2-utils libxss1 lmodern luatex netpbm
  ntrack-module-libnl-0 odbcinst odbcinst1debian2 oxygen-icon-theme pgf phonon
  phonon-backend-gstreamer plasma-scriptengine-javascript prosper ps2eps
  psutils qapt-batch sgml-data shared-desktop-ontologies soprano-daemon
  tex-common texlive texlive-base texlive-binaries texlive-common
  texlive-doc-base texlive-extra-utils texlive-font-utils
  texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-fonts-recommended-doc
  texlive-generic-recommended texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-base-doc
  texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-recommended-doc texlive-luatex
  texlive-pstricks texlive-pstricks-doc tipa virtuoso-minimal
  virtuoso-opensource-6.1-bin virtuoso-opensource-6.1-common

That's why I stick to editor for writing TeX ;)

Answer 2

These updates are almost certainly from the official repositories. The packages were probably installed as dependencies of other applications. They might be removable without affecting those other packages, or they might not. Either way, you can find out what would be removed by uninstalling them by simulating the deinstallation:

apt-get -s remove packagename

Replace packagename with the name of the package. You can list more than one, separated by spaces, but I recommend listing just one per run, so you can see specifically what each package is installed for.

If additional packages are listed to be removed, then you know that if you remove packagename, you lose those packages, too. It's possible that there are other packages that can benefit from some of packagename's functionality, but they will at least not be automatically removed if you remove packagename for real.

If you want more information specific to your situation, or want to know about specific packages, then you'll have to edit your question to add that information. In particular, you might consider adding the complete text from the Terminal, so we see exactly what KDE-related packages are installed and being updated on your system. While you've provided some very general information in comments to your question, really the specific and exact name of each package would be needed to give you finely tuned advice. (But you might be able to get all the information you need, just with the general advice in this answer.)

Answer 3

No kde installed

Probably this is wrong argument ,because you may not installed kde-plasma-workspace(the DE). But you already installed ,some kde apps(?) . Depending upon the type of the kde app ,they pull ,different kde dependancies from the repository , Nothing wrong with it