About uninstalling stuff

[amachini]

Hi! This is my first topic on the Ubuntu MATE community, so I apologize if I posted this under the wrong category.

I’ve installed (and tried a little bit) Ubuntu MATE 15.10 on my girlfriend’s 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 that’s not good as far as I know… Right? It has “core” 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, well… that’s all! I also want to apologize if I mistyped something, I’m from Argentina and here we speak castillian. And yeah, don’t ask, I like to drink mate with friends here!

Cheers, Ariel.

[mated]

@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)

Removing pre-installed packages is safe to do?

I do not use Pidgin or Thunderbird. If I try to remove these it says ubuntu-mate-desktop will be removed. Is this just a metapackage that can safely be removed? This is on 14.04.

[amachini]

Hey @mated!

Got it. So, if I want to uninstall some of the default software, I’ve to use sudo apt-get remove –purge x? (x is a package).

I’ve 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? What’s the difference between this command and not using –purge?

[wizd3m]

with –purge you remove the config files as well.

[mated]

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.

[rohithmadhavan]

mate-core is a metapackage. Removing it is safe and will not result in the removal of any other package. You can always reinstall it using apt-get.

Package details - http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=mate-core

[mated]

@rohithmadhavan, that’s what I was thinking; but I was hoping someone would chime in to verify! Thanks!

[mated]

@amachini, Go ahead with that command, on Firefox; you will be okay - if you still want to remove it. Good Luck!

[wolfman]

See the removal command section here too:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet/Howto

[lah7]

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:

[SOLVED] Safely switching LibreOffice 5 out for Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2

You can uninstall LibreOffice if you wanted to (would free up over 130 MB), but it'll also want to remove ubuntu-mate-desktop - It wouldn't break the system, it's simply a meta-package that acts as a list of all packages that come pre-installed with the Ubuntu MATE Desktop. The only possible problem is during upgrades where new applications for that release wouldn't be added (I believe). Other than that, I had no problems leaving ubuntu-mate-desktop removed between 15.04 to 15.10. :…

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.

[amachini]

mate-core is a metapackage. Removing it is safe and will not result in the removal of any other package. You can always reinstall it using apt-get.

Package details - http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=mate-core

Thank you for the answer, @rohithmadhavan! I’ll try uninstalling a few packages when I set up Ubuntu MATE on my computer next saturday/sunday.

@amachini, Go ahead with that command, on Firefox; you will be okay - if you still want to remove it. Good Luck!

Thanks, @mated!

See the removal command section here too:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet/Howto

Thank you for the link, @wolfman! That’ll be useful.

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:
[SOLVED] Safely switching LibreOffice 5 out for Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2

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.

Thanks for clarifying that, @lah7. So, I don’t have to reinstall anything after I remove that “metapackage” and everything should be working fine?

[lah7]

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.

[amachini]

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.

[lah7]

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:

sudo apt-get autoremove

[amachini]

Once you uninstall a meta-package, you may notice it’s wouldn’t reclaim that space, that’s where this command comes into place:

sudo apt-get autoremove

Sure about that? I used it once on Ubuntu 14.04 and it removed the whole desktop. I think this command is a bit broken.

[mated]

@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 ‘autoremove,’ itself, will only remove left over dependencies of packages you no longer have. Now, I’ve heard, if you were to uninstall a main package, such as Ubuntu desktop, ‘autoremove’ may get confused and remove other things it doesn’t think you need anymore; but I use ‘autoremove’ 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 versions… what other commands did you issue?

[lah7]

Ditto @mated’s explanation , that’s the purpose of autoremove.

This shouldn’t be a problem in Ubuntu MATE since we’ve got ubuntu-mate-core and mate-core too. Problems may start after all 3 or more get removed (might be worth testing later ) That’s a good point you raise there @amachini, but I can confirm removing ubuntu-matr-desktop to remove preinstalled programs hasn’t done this in 15.04+, possibly the same for 14.04/14.10 too.

I suppose you should always check what’s being removed, if it looks important and/or it’s an awful lot of packages then do not proceed!

If need be, you can “install” those packages that were planned for auto-removal, and then the package manager knows that these should stay on the system.

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@amachini By Ubuntu 14.04, you did mean the “Unity” regular Ubuntu?

[anon42388993]

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.

[amachini]

Thank you for the autoremove command explaination, guys!

I am wondering if this has something to do with the way 14.04 was constructed vs newer versions… what other commands did you issue?

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).

but because other factors can trip-up a Linux newbie into, inadvertently, doing something which they may not even realize they have done.

@mated, I’m a Linux newbie, heh.

@amachini By Ubuntu 14.04, you did mean the “Unity” regular Ubuntu?

Yes, I do. That was my first Linux installation, when I freed from Microsoft’s claws (some months ago ).

[jay]

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. I’m fairly certain that other distributions based on Ubuntu don’t 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 “recommended” package rather than a “required” 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 we’ve 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. I’m very hopeful that this practice will change in the next version.