On 2019-12-20, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> blueman is the package that claims to need pulseaudio (Debian site only
>shows it as "recommended", not required

While it is modern policy that all Recommended packages should be
installed automatically, I have had no problems as a result of not
doing that. Be warned that my usage pattern is not typical and this
may still cause problems for you.

The easiest way to achieve this on Debian (including Raspbian) is to
create a file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50norecommends with the contents:

Apt::Install-Recommends "false";

and this is part of my standard post-installation procedure on any
Debian host.

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