Being a virtual package and provided by some other package (NN-polikit), to me* it's a tomayto = tomahto situation.
ie: still a virtual package provided by a real one instead of a real, stand alone package to do just that and only that.
* ymmv, obviously.

So I'll just leave that one as-is and avoid the possibilty of something going south.

With respect to replacing pinentry-gnome3 with pinentry-curses, any ideas as how to do it without screwing up?

Thanks for your input.

Best,

A.

May need some minor tweaking, I had to replace a couple exec lines in some .desktops with a full pathway instead of just the name of the executable, but that was for some extensions, only one (one of my homemade apps) in /usr/share/applications. But other than that it dropped right in.

Having had reasonable success in ridding my box of unnecessary gnome files, I still have two to solve: policykit-1-gnome and pinentry-gnome3.
I have taken care to check on all dependencies but you never know, I will post any complaints I get.

The remaining gnome related files are either by choice (gnome-disk-utility) or dependencies of (timeshift.

This is what aptitude prints out when asked about:

1. policykit-1-gnome

$ aptitude why policykit-1-gnome
i   thunar Recommends policykit-1-gnome | polkit-1-auth-agent
$ 

and
2. pinentry-gnome3

$ aptitude why pinentry-gnome3
i   gnupg           Depends  gpg-agent (< 2.2.40-1.1.1~)
i A gpg-agent       Depends  pinentry-curses | pinentry 
i A pinentry-gnome3 Provides pinentry                   
$ 

If I understand correctly, the alternative to policykit-1-gnome would be polkit-1-auth-agent and the alternative to pinentry-gnome3 would be pinentry-curses.

Unfortunately, the first alternative is a virtual package provided, among others, by policykit-1-gnome.

See here: https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/po … auth-agent

So unless some other option is available, that will be it.

But pinentry-curses is available ...

$ apt list | grep pinentry-curses
--- snip ---
pinentry-curses/stable 1.2.1-1 amd64
--- snip ---
$ 

... and can be installed to replace pinentry-gnome3.

$ aptitude why pinentry-curses
i   gnupg     Depends gpg-agent (< 2.2.40-1.1.1~)
i A gpg-agent Depends pinentry-curses | pinentry 
$ 

Q: which would be the safe / proper manner to replace pinentry-gnome3 with pinentry-curses and not wreak havok in my system?

Thanks in advance.

Best,

A.