How To COMPLETELY Remove Applications On Linux
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ต.ค. 2022
- Some of the most common Linux support questions involve package management tasks such as updating, installing and removing software. And regarding removing software, one of the most frequently asked questions is: how can I completely remove an application? This is because simply uninstalling a program doesn't remove it's dependencies and/or configuration files.
WANT TO SUPPORT THE CHANNEL?
💰 Patreon: / distrotube
💳 Paypal: th-cam.com/users/redirect?even...
🛍️ Amazon: amzn.to/2RotFFi
👕 Teespring: teespring.com/stores/distrotube
DONATE CRYPTO:
💰 Bitcoin: 1Mp6ebz5bNcjNFW7XWHVht36SkiLoxPKoX
🐶 Dogecoin: D5fpRD1JRoBFPDXSBocRTp8W9uKzfwLFAu
📕 LBC: bMfA2c3zmcLxPCpyPcrykLvMhZ7A5mQuhJ
DT ON THE WEB:
🕸️ Website: distrotube.com/
📁 GitLab: gitlab.com/dwt1
🗨️ Mastodon: fosstodon.org/@distrotube
👫 Reddit: / distrotube
📽️ LBRY/Odysee: odysee.com/@DistroTube:2
FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE THAT I USE:
🌐 Brave Browser - brave.com/dis872
📽️ Open Broadcaster Software: obsproject.com/
🎬 Kdenlive: kdenlive.org
🎨 GIMP: www.gimp.org/
🎵 Tenacity: github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity
💻 VirtualBox: www.virtualbox.org/
🗒️ Doom Emacs: github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
Your support is very much appreciated. Thanks, guys! - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![[안방1열 풀캠4K] 베이비몬스터 'FOREVER' (BABYMONSTER FullCam)│@SBS Inkigayo 240707](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_2HL-ogzzBU/mqdefault.jpg)
![กินอาหาร ถูก vs แพง!! จานละ 500,000 vs จานละ 50!! [Ver. 2024]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FF_HppKg4vs/mqdefault.jpg)
This video was so important to be in the channel! Thanks DT...
You're telling me I didn't have to distro hop every time I wanted to uninstall a program?
lol
but you should.. it's the standered,
you are not a true linux usr if you are lazy didtro hop every 3rd day and customize to the fullest :)
No, just throwing computer out of the window is enough.
@@vaisakhkm783 That or you've used linux for long enough that you finally understand that distro choice just isn't all that important and you just want to get work done.
lol.. lazy!
Good video for somebody like me, completely new to Linux. I read through the comments below until I realized they are pretty much over my head, but you instruct so well in a very clear straightforward manner, that I'm just going to pay attention to you. Thank You.
An additional info regarding apt: You can combine purging and autoremove in one command: sudo apt purge program --auto-remove 😉
Thank you have learnt so much from you and chris titus tech , JustAGuy Linux over the last two months. As a long time windows user (98 to win10? To big and loaded with stuff that I never used) I was so used to changing something in windows and waiting for the blue screen of death that I just stopped changing things. You have give me the confidence to try things in Linux and make the system suit me thank you again keep up the good work.
The "--delete-data" flag for flatpak deletes the app data inside ".var/app" in your home directory.
Thank you for that info.
`flatpak uninstall --delete-data`, for already removed apps/runtimes
Hey DT. More Linux tutorials please! :D Tq for all you've done so far.
A package manager does know about program's you've built from source, if you build a package and install it through the package manager. On Arch this process is so simple there's a user maintained repository of files from which you can automatically build and install packages from source.
Also, it's pretty common for makefiles to have an uninstall target, so if you have installed a program that way, you can often do "sudo make uninstall" from its source directory to remove it. In fact the makefile you showed as an example even has it 😆
@Vir†με I don't, though. I use Fedora, smartypants.
It's kind of amazing how someone can be so biased against Arch users that it doesn't even cross their mind that someone who doesn't use it might have something positive to say about it.
@@QuotePilgrim I used arch for a couple years on my main system to see what the hype was about, but I'm also Fedora these days. Arch I think is most useful as a learning tool for newer users who wish to learn more about how their system is built, or for people who's hobby it is to aggressively tinker with their os. However I think it, and it's forks are actually terrible choices in general. The amount of work and overall knowledge it would take to get a system as complete and properly configured as a full distro like Fedora/SuSe/Ubuntu, etc is significant enough that probably 99+% of the arch userbase just isn't. One basic example: updating your system on arch annihilates the kernel modules of your running kernel! wtf? So now we have youtubers running around shilling the idea that you MUST immediately reboot your system after an update because arch failed to provide a proper system for this. SELinux? nope, default firewall? nope. But hey arch has the AUR! where anyone can upload whatever they want and you can blindly search for and install these definitely trustworthy packages that nobody would ever use for malicious purposes.... right?..... To be fair, it's uncommon, but seriously, be careful.
The thing about the modules really pisses me off though. This was a solved problem for decades and thanks to the popularity of arch we have regressed on something that is otherwise a strength of linux. I'm not saying I'm opposed to restarting, but the idea that updates for your programs should mandate an immediate restart of a kernel that probably was not vulnerable anyway is something that we left behind us in windows 2000. Updates should be automatic, and for the most part, not break your running system. Plus, while rare, thanks to this if a kernel update causes your system to become unbootable, on arch its time to boot off a recovery stick or something. On a proper distribution it will keep a rolling list of past kernels you can pick from at boot time.
I used Gentoo for many years as well, and at least there you get something out of it since you can compile your whole system with full optimizations for your specific cpu. (Which btw doesn't delete your past kernel.)
So yeah, LFS, Arch, or Gentoo for interested new linux users, but if you just want to get work done or run a server use something else.
This is a very long winded way to say “I use arch btw”
@@classicrockonly Except that I don't use Arch. At all. I use Fedora.
Last time I used Arch must've been like 7 years ago.
@@entelin maybe it's just because I used windows all my life except for this year, but I've never understood what is such a big deal about Linux not needing to restart ever (or in this case linux needing to restart). like yeah who really wants to restart their computer and have to reopen everything but it's a process that takes like maybe 3 minutes on a modern ssd? granted I use manjaro so I also update a lot less frequently than arch users but I also turn off my pc regularly every night, so if I was on arch I would just update before then. the only use case i see restarting being a big deal is for servers, but who the hell is running a server on arch?
Also in Synaptic package manager you can chose option "Mark for complete removal", and that will work like purge command.
Synaptic just a GUI fronted to apt and in this case runs apt purge directly in the background. Even in the terminal you don't need to type sudo apt purge or sudo pacman -Rns blah-blah all the time. It's possible to create a shell script using fzf that lists all the installed packages and lets you to choose which one to remove completely with all its dependencies.
I wish synaptic had icons for packages
Thank you for the great informational video!!
ana amazing tutorial! straight forward and understandable even to some dummies like myself. thanks!
As usual, great content. Please, consider adding a tutorial to remove old snaps (looks like updated snaps also keeps the old version installed) and also instructions to remove old kernels (using Neon for over 2 years, I've realized all my old kernels were preserved in the system - not removed by pkcon or apt).
BTW, pkcon also deserves some attention as it works (and usually is installed by default) across many different distros.
Few more things to add:
- "apt clean" to clean packages cache
- most of the Makefiles also provide dist-clean or similar targets to "uninstall" the stuff you installed with "install". If they don't - chase developers to add that :)
Another thing to add:
From reading the comments I think DT may not have done enough to emphasize that purging packages is *not* at all required or even generally desirable as a default. TLDR: Don't worry about purge except in specific cases where you know that you want this behavior. This is not equivalent to the concern people may be accustomed to on windows, where installers don't clean up after themselves.
These extra config files are things like directories inside of /etc . These files may be user or system modified, for example if you have samba installed, it will have files in /etc/samba . If you manually setup shares there, or use gui tools to setup file sharing, these files then get modified. As such, these files are often not even overwritten even by package _updates_ and on the rare occasion they require a change the user would be prompted to do so explicitly. Therefore if you uninstalled samba, it cannot assume you want to delete your manual configuration, and in many cases doing so may be overtly undesirable. Additionally these extra config files almost never cause any problems and are trivial in size, for example my entire /etc folder is just 37M. Lastly it's worth noting that purge will only remove filenames it installed, so for example if you made additional files or a copy of the distros original config file for a package, for example: "cp /etc/samba/smbd.conf /etc/samba/smbd.conf.orig" purge will not remove the .orig file, and therefore will not remove the /etc/samba folder either.
I was searching for this comment. DT talking about the difficulty of removing programs built from source while simultaneously looking at a Makefile that clearly allows you to uninstall its program by simply running `make uninstall`.
@@entelin and another one to add - a lot of software is shitting into .cache and also not cleaning it up behind itself after being deleted.
@@rsmith31416 Be careful with that though. If you are compiling and installing / uninstalling software using their included makefiles, ensure that the configured install prefix is pointed at either $HOME/.local or /usr/local . /usr/local should be basically empty by default, and package managers will not install things there. It's your playground tree for manually installed system wide files. *do not* let makefiles install into /usr it can be destructive. Additionally keep in mind that there's nothing terribly standard about makefile functionality on this, and it's not super uncommon that it might be outright broken for some packages.
@@alx8439 Assuming you're talking about $HOME/.cache . Packaging tools will never touch your home directory regardless, DT pointed this out. .cache is sort of akin to windows c:/temp it's just a temporary dumping ground for non configuration saved state. Things like browser caches for example. The whole thing can be deleted safely if you wish.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience
Your "find" usage is wrong. You can't just do "find ungoogled" because that just finds files exactly named "ungoogled" and nothing else. You need asterisks to expand the matching to "anywhere in file name".
My favorite way to remove user configs:
find ~ -iname "*theappname*"
Most of the time the config files are named something related to the app, so this finds them.
Can also do it globally with:
sudo find / -iname "*theappname*"
If an app contains spaces, it is unclear how they name their files. An app named "Audio Editor" could name its filed AudioEditor, Audio_Editor, Audio.Editor, etc. You can fix that by using wildcards in the middle since that means "zero or more of any character" so it will catch them all:
sudo find / -iname "*audio*editor*"
Thank you so much for this.
Hey DT, any plans on doing a music player tier list video ? or maybe video players as well ?, i think those two categories didn't get covered that much lately.
Love all your videos.
thanks for the grear video DT! I hope you make a video about pip install
I typically run
$ apt purge
$ apt autoremove -purge
in order to also remove the config files of the dependent packages.
Thank you for the thorough deep dive... I didn't know that I needed to know all of this stuff, but you helped me understand things in totality. I really do wish there was a uniform, pointed and click way to install things in the Linux World because it would give a uniform starting place to ask questions from. I'm having trouble installing an AppImage. The run option never appeared, and I miss having the feedback from the terminal installation that would at least let me know if it installed/ran/whatever... I shouldn't have to question whether or not a process is done on my computer, or whether it was successful... I left Windows because of that vary thing. Thank you abundantly though, and I wish anyone who sees this the absolute best....
👍 awesome again
Thank you!
Thinks for the video.
The best video that was needed ... Specially for Visual Studio Code 😅
I agree that normal users should not build from source. I often do it, regardless of whether an app is available elsewhere, even in my own distro's repositories, because I like to see how things work and occasionally modify them. When I first starting using a Pi as my only computer. (I now have a proper desktop, in case anyone asks, but spent four years with only a Pi.) I had to modify the PS1 emulator I was using to make it recognize my cheapo gamepad's joysticks. That was fun. Now I use RetroArch and it kicks butt as well as recognizes and allows configuration of everything.
Finally someone talked about this, always felt insecure to ask.
Never feel insecure to ask anything 💪
@@ArniesTech
Well getting bullied by a 'helpful' forum is a thing.
@@almuaz I am going to make a video on this for sure. Its absolutely incredible how the so called "Community" behaves sometimes.
@@almuaz Forums are full of garbage. I'm genuinely not exaggerating when I say that I haven't gone to a single forum question without at least 2 people being asshats. And I only look up serious questions so it's not like a "RTFM" situation either
Thank you bro
in time i was just looking for this
Can i use this in Manjaro Linux too for example ?
You can speak about the make uninstall or make remove depending of the software you build. It's typically the way to remove a program installed from source without a package manager.
But the best way is packaging a software after compiling
Replacing make install by checkinstall
So, when you run "autoremove", what if the dependencies, for the program you want to remove, are required by another program? This video is a huge help. Thank you.
How would one completely remove applications and their config files on fedora/dnf based distros?
I always wanted this video. Please make more videos that teaches how to live with linux. I tried to shift from windows to linux. What I don't like is Touchpad gestures are missing that I could probably live with. The worst thing for me is that zoom is not proper for images and Websites i.e. Windows handles zooming into WebPages and Images really smooth while in linux image zooming is kinda laggy and inacurate and for websites the zoom is not Pan zoom but direct scale changing and readjustment zoom. Atleast this is my experience with every linux distro I tried.
On void Linux -r will recursively delete all dependencies, -O cleans cache and -o removes orphaned packages, I'm unsure of what the equivalent of purge is though
Hi DT! Thank you so much for your great videos :-)
Could you consider covering the Year 2038 Problem on Linux devices ? I think this is potentially one of several arguments that could curb or even deter Linux adoption in the next years, although solutions to circumvent the issue already exist. If you've never talked about it it before, I have no doubt that your expertise and voice could prove helpful to give a much clearer picture of the situation.
Wishing you well!
I'm confused on the home folder. You say that when uninstalling programs trough package manager it doesn't touch it (makes sense), but when I install programs with it, folders get created in my home all the time. Why is that?
Hey DT, I'd like a video on updating AUR packages with Yay. Specifically, a detailed explanation of what the "packages to exclude" "packages to clean build" and "diffs to show" options mean. This information is available on forums, and is briefly referenced in some "how to update AUR package" videos, but it'd be nice to see a dedicated video on these options and what each of their options does. Thanks for all your help, Arch has been a great experience.
Don't use yay, it's dead. Use paru instead.
On `ArchLinux` you can also run `sudo pacman -Rncs $(pacman -Qtdq)` to remove all unneeded packages and dependencies from the system.
I could not remove geoclue from Manjaro!
I Will try these.
what if it shows something like,
E: Unable to locate package iTunes
because that is the error that i keep running into i don't have the windows system on my chromebook is it necessary to do that??? because it's just not showing up anywhere in the linux terminal. so im having difficulties with trying to locate it to get it to be removed any advice?
You sound like you know stuff? I am trying to install Nitroshare on Linux Mint 21.1 I did the using alien, it's there in the file system but not listed in ALL APPLICATIONS? It shows when searching for it, but it's just the file from file system when I click on it.
What do I do now?
This made me realize AppImages are a LOT like how apple installs software
You know, in apt, you can do: sudo apt autoremove --purge program. You can also do sudo apt autoremove --purge
And this is why I love the internet. Thank you so much DT. Keep the tutorials coming.
I tried installing the last release of Safari.exe with wine, and now Apple Software Update is stuck in my Applications in Ubuntu. Not sure how to remove that.
thanks
Still wish there was a way you could tell the package managers to remove config files and folders from the home directory. After bouncing around desktop environments my home folder is littered with them. And since there are a lot of dependencies I have no way of telling if a config file went with that DE I just uninstalled…
What's that character after sudo find? It's not on my keyboard. DT, why do you have both Snaps and Flatpaks? I would think it would be one or the other. I prefer Appimages. They seem easier and don't clog up the system as much.
You can also do "sudo apt autoremove --purge package-name" to do it all in one line.
What'S fish prompet name you're using ?
I made me a script years ago. Does update, upgrade, clean, autoclean, autoremove, purge, delete orphaned ( deborphan), delete residual config files( although I took at that part which used wajig and could under certain conditions mess with very important configs) and then some deleting cache stuff. All in one go. For deb based systems of course.
I just take a hammer to my hard drive it totally removes all the packages and dependency... the downside it gets expensive after a while
I pull the power cord out of my computer to close vim.
Can I get a list of installed applications without also listing the related configuration files and without listing the related dependencies?
Can anyone tell me that how we can completely remove packages in Fedora and Opensuse
How do you remove a repository? i tried downloading steam, and now i can not get rid of its several repositories i used the steam website installation guide they had, and i can not get rid of it, Help. Thank you!!
DT, make a review about the new Porteus release. It's a distro based on Slackware.
Can you explain what the "residual config" packages are? Is it ok to del those? How do you del those?
This would apply to most things inside of /etc. So for example if you installed Samba, it creates /etc/samba with default config files like smbd.conf. X11 would have /etc/X11 and so on. These files are not removed by default because the user (or system) may have changed and configured them. They are also not overwritten by default when you upgrade a package without prompting you. As such, if you remove a program like this, then reinstall it, your configuration will be preserved. You need purge to force the removal of this stuff, though there is almost never any harm in leaving them and the disk space these files take up tends to be trivial. For example my entire /etc folder is 37 MB on fedora. Most packages do not have configuration and are therefore unaffected by purge. Cleaning up unused dependency packages with autoremove though is a good idea, these will only exist if you uninstall a package with dependencies that only it now requires. Autoremove will not however remove packages that you explicitly installed. Additionally many distros will prompt you to autoremove packages that are no longer needed, so often this isn't explicitly needed unless you say no.
:) i just delete the root pation and reinstall system
Just alias "apt purge" to "dd". :D
I am always scared when removing programs. i have removed pihole in the past and after the uninstall, I had no internet.
I suck at find. I updatedb && locate -i and delete as needed
APT is not a package manager.
Debian's package manager is DPKG.
For some reason it's can't find the program even though I know it's installed on my computer
Yep. Nothing beats a basic command line 101 💪🙏
Termux has a similar delete system for programs you install on your android devices. pkg autoclean removes all unneeded dependencies from your system after you remove your program.
But don't run pkg clean. It wipes everything.
You can run `sudo apt autoremove --purge` to do it in one line
Just create a script which automates it so you don't have to go through that
No dnf / rpm ? 🤔 😓
sudo apt apt autoremove --purge
That'll get rid of old dependencies and their config files.
Even the db files like Maria or MySQL ?
1) That's not how find works. It doesn't search for sub-strings. You searched for a file named exactly "ungoogled". To get the result you wanted, you'd need to use find / -iname "ungoogled*".
2) Almost any package that has a "make install" also has a "make uninstall".
thank you for doing these tutorials for us noobs out there
This video gets into some deep water and answers questions even aspiring super nerds were afraid to ask.
the great purge!
Can you share your linux distro iso file for installing on our system.
That won't work, because the drivers and configuration is specifically made for his computer system. If you had the exact same hardware, then it would be possible. That is why OS installers exist.
I'm scared of apt purge or, you know, just apt in general. On more than one occasion, I've managed to accidentally purge my entire DE, if not all of Xorg, and get dropped to a tty. I'm sure if I used it today I would know enough not to let that happen, but still, even as a beginner that never happened to me with any other package manager.
On a side note, I don't think I've ever typed simply "pacman -R", I've always done "pacman -Rsn".
You can use apt -s to do a simulation before
@@Ben-hg3bz I don't see myself going back to a Debian-based distro in the foreseeable future, but I'll try to keep this in mind if I ever do.
For the past few months I've been on Fedora and it's by far the best distro I've ever used, despite one minor gripe I have with dnf.
There's also apt autopurge
Hey DT! Love your tutorials! Could you please make a tutorial for connecting from windows to a manjaro machine using RDP? Preferably so that one can enter an open session (single user) just like one would with windows? (is that even possible?)
Thank you!
apt remove --purge ... But in my experience this pretty much breaks the system every time
I just remove the distro and install again 🙆
easy....
Man APT needs a much needed Upgrade
that makefile had an uninstall command
nice vid,Mr white,your point is help alot!Hope you doing well with Jesse Pinkman
flatpak remove --unused
I have always just done sudo pacman -Rsnu and deleted stuff like that lol
I was not able to remove 'geoclue' from Manjaro.
I'm gonna try this!
Finally!! You did a video about this.. i came for a hope but sorry to say it left me quite disappointed
i love linux more than windows btw and the thing is whatever you love you have to compromise with something
Disappointed in what way?
@@entelin i mean apt config files still have to be removed manually and some snap package files too.. it just creates some extra steps to completely remove the packages
@@juljul123 The video may not have done a sufficient job in explaining that there's basically never a need to remove these config files. These files are for example the files that live in /etc and may have been system or user customized, so defaulting to purge would mean the system would default to potentially deleting your configuration. These files are often not even overwritten on package updates. Things like /etc/X11 or /etc/samba, or your network configuration, etc. Plus the disk space usage is trivial, for example my entire /etc is 37M. Purge is if you have a specific desire to remove this stuff for specific packages that you have either already backed up, or otherwise know you don't want anymore. So basically, don't worry about it, and don't use purge blindly as a default. Most packages don't even have system level configuration anyway.
😁 as easy as this:
# emerge --deselect [package-name]
# emerge --depclean
I appreciate these videos but the one thing Linux users do that is a horrible mistake is emphazing the terminal. That scares most people away. Windows can be run from a terminal also. But people don't. When Android took Linux, what did they do? Virtually eliminate the terminal. It's simply not needed today. 25 years ago yes. But not today.
2:05 to 3:35..I wonder if adding a * aka asterick to the " purge " part as in make it ... purge firefox* if it will auto nuke in and all folders ..and possibly files that have the name firefox labeled to it?
Also to enhance/simplify that example ( username is what you actually named your pc during installing whatever linux distro you installed. This instruction is applicable to debian based such as ubuntu and linux mint, I am unsure if it's different for arch based or gentoo, etc )
so if you wanted to nuke EVERYTHING Involved with firefox
sudo apt purge firefox && sudo apt rm -r /home/username/.mozilla/firefox && sudo apt purge /home/username/.cache/mozilla/firefox
( remember if you don't want firefox but still using Thunderbird..DON'T delete any mozilla folders as chances are they are involved with running Thunderbird correctly..just specify firefox if you no longer want firefox)
rm -r vs rmdir
rm -r force deletes any directory you specify regardless of whether or not it's empty ** BE CAREFUL..SLOW DOWN..pay attention to what you're telling it to delete!! **
4:57 to 5:05 BE CAREFUL..( and I HIGHLY recommend you do either a system image backup or clone OR at least a timeshift backup 1st before removing ANY...gir1 files...some of these are required by Linux Mint just for basic stuff to function. I've learned this the hard way many times... when in doubt..DON'T delete them but delete/remove the others or do them one at a time AFTER you've made your backup(s) and confirmed that everything still works as it should)
"This is where all your appimages should live". Now you're just making stuff up…
docs.appimage.org/user-guide/faq.html#question-where-do-i-store-my-appimages
Google...use it! ;)
Also, if you use the AppImageLauncher (which most AppImage users will use), it will move any AppImage that isn't in HOME/Applications to that directory.
Use NixOS.
autoremove is evil
First
Confirmed!
@@DistroTube yay :)
this sucks, uninstalling shouldn't be this hard
wow, your talking so fast i could barley keep up with you. in fact i had to take a rest after 10 minutes, check your blood pressure! is their a time limit to how long you have for your videos? you should also check out "instantaneous human combustion" your a candidate.
Not sure why you skipped over dnf entirely but gave time to total crap like snap and appimage
Bro yapped for 16 minutes straight