Hi! This is my first topic on the Ubuntu MATE community, so I apologize if I posted this under the wrong category.
Iāve installed (and tried a little bit) Ubuntu MATE 15.10 on my girlfriendās notebook and well, I liked everything, except the part that if I want to uninstall a x package (for example, Mozilla Firefox), mate-core (I think this was the name) will be gone too, and thatās not good as far as I knowā¦ Right? It has ācoreā in its name.
Is there a solution for that? I know that the software that comes with Ubuntu MATE is cool but, I have other personal preferences.
Uh, wellā¦ thatās all! I also want to apologize if I mistyped something, Iām from Argentina and here we speak castillian. And yeah, donāt ask, I like to drink mate with friends here!
@amachini, be careful with this sort of thing Put this below 'sudo' command in your terminal, and Firefox will be gone. sudo apt-get remove --purge firefox
In some OS's there could be other programs that depend on Firefox; and removing Firefox would remove these programs as well - I do not know about U-MATE.
If you don't like Firefox, then don't use it. You can remove it from your menus; but I would think twice about uninstalling it. A backup browser can be a good thing.
Well, Linux is freedom so there is the command to take out most programs (without that last firefox part, unless its firefox)
Got it. So, if I want to uninstall some of the default software, Iāve to use sudo apt-get remove āpurge x? (x is a package).
Iāve read on the topic you linked that purging programs may be dangerous (with danger I mean breaking the OS ). So, it is actually safe to do that? Whatās the difference between this command and not using āpurge?
There are a couple of ways to remove packages. When you remove packages, you merely remove the packages - but not their configuration files. Used alone, the following command removes a package in a terminal window. sudo apt-get remove [x]
When we purge a package, we remove the packages and all of its configuration files. The command below purges a package in our terminal window.
sudo apt-get purge [x]
After a purge, you would generally execute sudo apt-get autoremove
I gave you a combo command, for convenience earlier - it works fine too.
I were removing pre-installed programs yesterday in a virtual machine, meta-packages as stated by @rohithmadhavan are perfectly safe to "remove".
ubuntu-mate-desktop
ubuntu-mate-core
mate-core
There were clarification about swapping LibreOffice in another thread:
In summary, meta-packages act like a list telling it which other packages to install. Since you remove one of them, this effectively means we don't need that "list" anymore.
So, I don't have to reinstall anything after I remove that "metapackage" and everything should be working fine?
Correct. The beauty of Ubuntu/Linux is that you can take out and put in what you like (providing it's compatible).
If you decide to "install" the meta-package later, anything you had previously removed will be installed again.
Oh, so the metapackage works like a kind of "installed by default" list that is removed if I uninstall Plank, for example? If I install it again, it'll automatically download everything from that list I've removed?
I know, I'm asking what you've answered here, but just to be sure I've got it right, heh.
Yep, that sums it up. Meta-packages exist for other types of packages too -- like libreoffice (contains the complete LibreOffice suite) and compiz (installs all components needed for Compiz to work)
Once you uninstall a meta-package, you may notice it's wouldn't reclaim that space, that's where this command comes into place:
@amachini, I told you to be careful - way before all of this correspondence took place; not so much because the commands are risky - but because other factors can trip-up a Linux newbie into, inadvertently, doing something which they may not even realize they have done.
The āautoremove,ā itself, will only remove left over dependencies of packages you no longer have. Now, Iāve heard, if you were to uninstall a main package, such as Ubuntu desktop, āautoremoveā may get confused and remove other things it doesnāt think you need anymore; but I use āautoremoveā plenty and never had a single issue.
I am wondering if this has something to do with the way 14.04 was constructed vs newer versionsā¦ what other commands did you issue?
Ditto @matedās explanation , thatās the purpose of autoremove.
This shouldnāt be a problem in Ubuntu MATE since weāve got ubuntu-mate-core and mate-core too. Problems may start after all 3 or more get removed (might be worth testing later ) Thatās a good point you raise there @amachini, but I can confirm removing ubuntu-matr-desktop to remove preinstalled programs hasnāt done this in 15.04+, possibly the same for 14.04/14.10 too.
I suppose you should always check whatās being removed, if it looks important and/or itās an awful lot of packages then do not proceed!
If need be, you can āinstallā those packages that were planned for auto-removal, and then the package manager knows that these should stay on the system.
@amachini By Ubuntu 14.04, you did mean the āUnityā regular Ubuntu?
Double ditto on all this. It has happen to me on u12.04. The solution for me was to reinstall the meta pack and then remove it again. No further issues.
Thank you for the autoremove command explaination, guys!
I think that installing updates through the terminal (sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade) gave me problems many times. That's why I'm always a bit scared when I install new updates. I haven't installed (on my computer) and tried that on Ubuntu MATE yet, but I can say that I had these issues with updates on Ubuntu 14.04, 14.10 and 15.04 and on Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela (enabling and installing the level 4 and 5 updates that are shown as regular updates on Ubuntu's updates).
Does anyone know why Ubuntu MATE meta-packages require Firefox? A meta package for a distribution depending on a browser seems strange to me. For example, on Ubuntu (normal Ubuntu) removing Firefox does not remove the ubuntu-desktop metapackage. Iām fairly certain that other distributions based on Ubuntu donāt have this problem either. If you ask me, this seems like a bug we should file and help fix. I think the correct action here would be for the Ubuntu MATE metapackages to set Firefox as a ārecommendedā package rather than a ārequiredā one. I could be wrong on that though.
In my opinion, for a new user to even be put in this position in the first place (needing to figure out if a web browser is going to uninstall other important OS packages) means weāve failed the demographic.
In my case, I always remove distribution-provided Firefox packages and I roll my own Firefox packages (personal preference). This practice in Ubuntu MATE makes this more difficult. Iām very hopeful that this practice will change in the next version.
Put this below 'sudo' command in your terminal, and Firefox will be gone.
). So, it is actually safe to do that? Whatās the difference between this command and not using āpurge?
) Thatās a good point you raise there 