remove GNOME

edit

Sounds like a bug. There's been a restructuring of the package groups. I'm not sure of the current status.

This seems to work for me:

$ sudo yum remove @gnome-desktop

Please note that this will probably remove quite a few system packages that KDE might need. I suggest the following method instead:

$ sudo yum shell
> remove @gnome-desktop
> ts list #check what packages are removed
> install @kde
> ts list #check that system packages aren't removed now
> run

Basically, the shell lets you run more than one command as one transaction. In this case, we're removing gnome and installing kde, ensuring that all packages required by kde are indeed left on the system after the transaction.

Instead of using yum directly, try installing and running yumex:

yum install yumex

yumex

The first needs root access, the second should be run as a regular user; it will prompt for the appropriate password, but most of it doesn't need (and shouldn't have) root access. Once it's checked for updates, you can select Groups, select Gnome and select whatever packages you want to remove and let it do what's needed.