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submitted 10 months ago by BearPear@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

I want to remove xfce from my debian 12 system. What is the best way to do it?

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[-] Chais@sh.itjust.works 110 points 10 months ago
[-] WhyAUsername_1@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

Hahaha.. thanks for the Chuckle..

[-] BearPear@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago
[-] Chais@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago
[-] AspieEgg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I think that: sudo apt purge xfce4* sudo apt autoremove

should do it.

I’ll point out that the other answers here are also correct. It depends on how you want to clean it from your system.

“apt remove” will only remove the packages, not the config files
“apt purge” will remove the packages and config files
“apt autoremove” will clean up the orphaned dependencies
“xfce4” will only remove the DE
“xfce4*” will remove the DE and most of the other packages that come with xfce

[-] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 17 points 10 months ago

You can combine all of those with apt remove --auto-remove --purge xfce4*

[-] gideonstar@feddit.de 2 points 10 months ago

hat would be a good way to remove any depe

apt --purge autoremove xfce4

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

When I did this on Ubuntu, when I shut down I still see some stuff from xfce

[-] AspieEgg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 10 months ago

Not every package that comes with xfce has a name that starts with xfce4, just most of them do. You may need to identify and remove other packages too.

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

This is why I hate apt

In NixOS when you remove the package from the list of packages you don't have the symlinks pointing to it anymore, so it is like it's not there (you can garbage collect it)

[-] RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago

That's a lot easier than my method of loading synaptic, searching the DE name, then marking everything for removal.

[-] BearPear@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Thanks. This is helpful

[-] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 18 points 10 months ago

apt remove --auto-remove xfce4

[-] lily33@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago

That's the way. However, I'd like to add that when I used Debian, I regularly got leftovers after uninstalling things, especially when removing big things work lots of dependencies. So expect some dependencies to remain.

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 10 months ago

That's just how package managers seem to work in my experience. Even using --purge on APT leaves behind a ton of junk.

[-] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

--purge does not do anything with dependencies. You will need to explicitly remove all packages that are marked as installed manually, i. e. all packages that you pointed a package manager to install. If a DE was installed automatically by Debian installer, or if you installed it with apt install xfce4, the only manually installed component it the xfce4 metapackage, and using the --auto-remove flag will remove all its dependencies. But if you additionally installed any components or packages that depend on that components, you will also need to clean them up manually.

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 10 months ago

But if you additionally installed any components or packages that depend on that components, you will also need to clean them up manually.

Doesn't --autoremove purge do that?

[-] BearPear@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago
[-] Dirk@lemmy.ml 10 points 10 months ago

What is the best way to do it?

By uninstalling the corresponding packages, I guess ... Don't know in detail how Debian works nowadays, but there will likely a meta package or a package group you can remove to remove Xfce with all dependencies

[-] planish@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 months ago

Open up Synaptic, search up all the packages that say stuff about XFCE, mark them for removal, and then apply all the changes.

[-] Prismey@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago

You can run sudo apt purge xfce4 (if you wan to remove all of its components and dependencies) or sudo apt remove xfce4. If you don't have an other DE installed, I suggest you find one and do it form the other DE, because if you don't, you're gonna end up without a graphical environement, and you would have to do everything frop the terminal.

[-] nbailey@lemmy.ca 5 points 10 months ago

If it was installed with tasksel that would be a good way to remove any dependancies like lightdm as well.

this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
47 points (98.0% liked)

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