Hi!
In Synaptic I see these packages:
libminizip-dev
libminizip1
minizip
Do I need these packages?
I have 7z installed and I don't use .zip files.
I'll suggest to ask Aptitude on your system:
aptitude why minizip
aptitude why libminizip1
aptitude why libminizip-dev
and share results with us 
2 Likes
Hi,
I do see them too on my system in the 'not installed' section.
If you see them installed then they most probably are a dependency for some package and you may want to follow @Norbert_X advice to find out that dependency.
and I think OP is trying to reduce his packages to update.....a good idea to reduce internet junk if not needed, etc
so a generic suggestion would be
sudo apt-get remove --purge
The command would then tell you what else is going to be removed and hopefully you will press n for no if you see....things like your desktop being removed or other essential apps.
To find what packagename to type I run
dpkg -l | less
and if you can not see 2 tabs open in whatever your terminal is....open 2 terminals
run each command in each terminal
both mate-terminal and lxterminal offer multiple tabs
but I prefer lxterminal for my configs
eg image shows mate and lxterminals stacked with 2 tabs open each but only showing tab1 results
if you think you have multiple packages you can also use wildcards in your apt command.
eg sudo apt-get remove --purge vlc*
The following packages will be REMOVED:
vlc* vlc-bin* vlc-data* vlc-l10n* vlc-plugin-base* vlc-plugin-notify*
vlc-plugin-qt* vlc-plugin-samba* vlc-plugin-skins2* vlc-plugin-video-output*
vlc-plugin-video-splitter* vlc-plugin-visualization*
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 12 to remove and 6 not to upgrade
I don't have aptitude installed, so I can't run "aptitude why minizip" @ Norbert_X
Is there a command for apt with why?
I'm working on fast lightweight Ubuntu Mate So I try to remove a few packages that I don't needed.
To find out if there are dependencies of a package, I use
"Synaptic package manager" and test with REMOVE command before I run
in "mate-terminal" the sudo apt-get remove --purge 'packagename' command.
When I type sudo apt-get remove --purge 'packagename' in mate-terminal I see the packages I want to remove.
If there are special dependencies that are important, I leave it and abort.
Sometimes something went wrong with the remove --purge command, I do first a backup of my harddisk where Ubuntu Mate is installed before remove packages.
I use a old version from 2018 of Acronis True Image Boot Rescue Disk which
supports "ext3+4 filesystem"
That make it easily to restore the old state of my system after the remove --purge command went wrong.
I had already posted a package-remove-list here in the forum which is now outdated. There are again a lot of packages that I have removed.
I will soon post an update to the package-remove-list for a
very slim Ubuntu Mate.
There is no direct alternative for aptitude why AFAIK. But Aptitude itself is very useful.
It allows to repair system with serious breakage.
Looks very similar to previous post -
And I need to say that such experiments are safer on Virtual Machine with snapshots.
Here for clean minimal installation you may want to use tasksel install ubuntu-mate-core or apt-get install ubuntu-mate-core^
On installed system you can check the dependencies list on packages.ubuntu.com and adjust list of packages on installed system to it.
If you want to save disk space - then enable Size column in Synaptic's Preferences:
and sort list of installed packages on size to get top big packages:
But be careful with removing or purging - you can harm the system.
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ok, thanks for the info @ Norbert_X...
1 Like
I share an opinion that minimal system is better built by dressing up a bare core than by stripping down a full-featured distribution.
They say, some people install Ubuntu server or even Ubuntu core (https://ubuntu.com/core) and add some desktop environment to it.
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for those of us who do not have
Acronis True Image there are other alternatives.
I use a live usb with the package called
fsarchiver.......its much faster to both write and restore than partimage.
If interested assuming you have been lazy like me and put all of your UM onto the first partition with no separate home etc.....
my live product boots up to root mode already.
I create a mount point to save files
then run a save command
or run a restore command
eg
$ sudo su (if needed)
mkdir /z
mount /dev/sda3 /z
fsarchiver savefs /z/a.fsa /dev/sda1 -a (to save partition image of sda1)
or
fsarchiver restfs /z/a.fsa id=0,dest=/dev/sda1 (to restore image a to sda1)
Due to size of image, I always create quite a large spare partition to write these images.
and from time to time make a copy on a different drive but I have only one SSD
@ aus9, Acronis True Image... ok, it's not open source but
encrypted hard disks can also be easily backed up and recovered,too.
The easiest choice for me.
If there is something similar to Acronis True Image and open source I would try it.
Is there any software I can run from dvd to create/restore full hard disk images
like Acronis True Image for Linux?
well I do not do full disk images only partition images
but you may like to have a look at
http://www.clonezilla.org/
Naturally do not expect it to support your current images.
I'll try it out @ aus9, thanks.