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I tried out kubuntu-desktop on vanilla 20.10 but now I'm done with that and want to remove it. No matter what I do I can still select Plasma on the login screen, I still have a kubuntu boot screen, my minimize/maximize buttons are wrong in Gnome, ugly icons everywhere... The list goes on.

I've tried:

  • apt remove kubuntu-desktop, and then autoremove. I've come across some statements saying that that's not expected to work, but no explanation of why that shouldn't work. Not even after reading up on meta packages do I see why that shouldn't work.
  • The instructions on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FromUbuntuToKubuntu. The output to the command just gives a long list of everything that's not installed, which doesn't help me.
  • Looking at various similar questions here with 6 year old answers with comments describing the various levels of broken the respective answer left their system in. I naturally did not try most of those.
  • Tried to uninstall plasma-desktop, but no success, I can still select Plasma upon login.

I haven't manually installed any of the components of kubuntu-desktop. I don't see why it's still supposed to be hanging on to all of its dependencies indefinitely from now on? Anyway, I'm now left with a Gnome desktop that's even worse than when I felt the need to investigate alternatives, which is not ideal.

Do I need to just wipe the entire OS, or is this recoverable in 2020?

Andreas
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    Does this answer your question? How do I change the plymouth bootscreen? – guiverc Dec 07 '20 at 08:27
  • The plymouth screen is really just a wallpaper, and whilst installed when you add a desktop, the removal of the desktop leaves it behind until it's changed by addition of another plymouth, or you switching back to your prior used one. If you changed GTK settings whilst in Plasma, that impacts your GNOME setup too. Did you purge or only remove? Did you return to using gdm3 or leave it at sddm? and have you rebooted? (as some details will still be in memory until you restart services or reboot...) – guiverc Dec 07 '20 at 08:28
  • @guiverc Thanks, no. You're right that I don't know what plymouth is, but the bootscreen is the least problematic of all the things kubuntu-desktop installed. In gnome I now get two different cursors depending on which app I hover over. I even get Kubuntu's completely broken scrolling behavior with the cursors. It's a mess, and since it's bleeding over into Gnome to this extent all of it has to go, not just a startup image. – Andreas Dec 07 '20 at 08:32
  • The most reliable way to see what kubuntu-desktop installed, one should search in /var log/apt/history.log – mook765 Dec 07 '20 at 08:38
  • If you apt install kubuntu-desktop, you can apt purge to remove it & remove settings; however if you've also changed packages between the install & remove|purge steps, you may have caused them to be marked as manually installed thus they may not have been removed by the purge (ie. they are no longer seen as installed with kubuntu-desktop, but became linked to a later command you ran after the install & before the purge). You've not provided any details of what you did between the apt install & apt purge so I'd explore your command history/apt.logs for clues – guiverc Dec 07 '20 at 08:38
  • @mook765 Thanks, it was helpful to see what install commands had been run. – Andreas Dec 07 '20 at 09:00
  • @guiverc Thanks for your suggestions. You're right that it's difficult without knowing what was done inbetween. mook765 gave me a way to find out. It turns out that Wayland support is not included in kubuntu-desktop, and needed to be added separately with plasma-workspace-wayland, which seems to have held onto some things causing both versions of Plasma to remain available on the login screen. I think that with your original link I can now restore the last pieces without reinstalling. Thanks! – Andreas Dec 07 '20 at 09:18

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