How to Uninstall/Remove GNOME from CentOS/RHEL 7

The GNU Network Object Model Environment, also known as GNOME, is a powerful and easy-to-use environment consisting primarily of a panel, a desktop, and a set of desktop tools with which program interfaces can be constructed. GNOME is designed to provide a flexible platform for the development of powerful applications.

But sometimes, you may want to remove it and use another desktop environment like KDE. This document illustrates the steps required to remove “GNOME” using Yum on CentOS/RHEL 7.

Before starting the procedure to remove “GNOME”, take a VM snapshot or full system backup. “GNOME” is deeply integrated into the system once it’s installed, it won’t be easy to remove all traces. In order to have a fully clean system, it’s recommended to re-install it without a GUI.

To remove the “GNOME” follow the steps below:

1. Modify /etc/yum.conf and add the line below:

# vi /etc/yum.conf
group_command=simple

Note: When you tell yum to remove a package group, it will remove every package in that group, even if those packages are members of other package groups or dependencies of other installed packages. However, you can instruct yum to remove only those packages which are not required by any other packages or groups by adding the groupremove_leaf_only=1.

2. Then run the following commands to remove the GNOME group packages.

# yum groupremove 'X Window System' 'GNOME' yum groupremove "multimedia" "internet-browser" "guest-agents" "guest-desktop-agents" "x11" "print-client" "dial-up"
# yum groupinstall 'Minimal Install' 'System administration tools'
# yum groupremove 'Server with GUI' 
# yum groupremove 'Fonts' 'Graphical Administration Tools'

3. Reboot the server:

# shutdown -r

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