Is there a log anywhere that has a list of packages installed and
their install dates?
If not, what is a good way to completely back out of a package and
all the installed dependencies?
The only way I know of to do this is to use "apt-cache show <package>"
to see what the dependancies are for a package and then list them all
in a purge command string. That will remove the package and purge all
the config files and directories associated with it. For example:
# apt-get remove --purge package1 package2 package3
will purge all three packages and in the right order since package1
depends on package2, and package2 depends on package 3.