Re: Best way to prune my installation
"Bob Alexander" <rjalex2001@yahoo.com> writes:
> I have way too many packages installed that I do not really need.
>
> I have played with debfoster, orphaner etc ... still quite difficult.
>
> Is there a way to say:
>
> This is the list of the packages I really need. Keep them and their
> dependencies and uninstall everything else ....
This is straightforward if you use aptitude for everything; it keeps
track of whether or not a package was automatically installed or not
(that is, you never explicitly requested foo, it came as a
dependency). You can also manually toggle the auto-install flag.
Many people also find aptitude more usable than dselect (though I've
also met people who hate it).
Start aptitude as root. It will bring up a listing of several
top-level categories. Press enter on "installed packages", then on a
particular section. You can press 'M' to mark a package as
auto-installed; aptitude might decide to turn that package purple and
want to remove it if nothing depends on it. In most cases, you'll
want everything in the libs, libdevel, and interpreters section marked
this way, unless you know otherwise. '-' will uninstall something.
'g' will bring up a listing of what aptitude wants to do; 'g' again
will make it go.
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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