Weak dependencies: Is it compulsory to install them?

Ask Fedora
1

When I tried to install the package group called LXQt, there was a long list of dependencies under the heading “weak dependencies”.

What I did next was to type the following command:

sudo dnf --setop=install_weak_deps=False install @lxqt

Questions:

  1. Will my installed Fedora system become unstable?

  2. What are the possible downsides of not installing weak dependencies?

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2

No. Your installation is perfectly fine. It’s complete, and all necessary requirements are met—they are not weak dependencies, they are strong dependencies (Requires vs Recommends/Suggests).

They’re dependencies that aren’t compulsory, but may be desired for extra functionality. So, you can ignore them if you wish. You just won’t have the extra features. The use case for weak dependencies is exactly yours—having smaller minimal installs but feature rich default installs. More information here.

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