Re: how NOT to work with debian

[Richard Lyons <richard@the-place.net>]

On Monday 11 August 2003 4:08 pm, Michael D. Schleif wrote:

> > > Try this:
> > >
> > >
> > > <http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=gxXP.6fz
> > >.7%4 0gated-at.bofh.it>
> >
> > We-ell.  That looks horrible.  31 or 32 packages to remove by name
[...]

> All I know is that I looked high and low for a way to completely remove
> everything kde, and could not find it.  I came up with this brute force
> method, and it worked for me.
>
> Bottomline, as good as apt/dpkg is, remove is *not* the same as purge,
> and -- even then -- some things remain, and interfere with the
> reinstall.
>
> I strongly urge you to remove everything kde, and start over -- clean.
> For those incomplete dpkg -l entries, you can do a creative apt-cache
> search, and figure it out . . .
>
> Obviously, this is a very last resort . . .

Well, I eventually did it.  I NOW HAVE KDE BACK!  Thanks.  The 30-odd packages 
turned out to be only 25-ish.  But the second stage, the removal of all the 
remaining bits of KDE, was alarming.  Your step 5,

   find / | grep -i kd | less
   find / | grep -i qt | less
found thousands of files.  Then I realised that they were all in about twenty 
directories, so I deleted or renamed the directories.  After that it ran 
smoothly, only one error of configuration caused by my having deleted one 
file too many.

Kooka and other applications have duplicate entries in all menus and toolbars, 
though.  Is this a recognisable symptom of something.  Perhaps I did mis a 
file that has had its contents appended???

Other than that, I am thrilled.  This is the first time I have managed to 
access devices on the USB from Linux - a real bonus.

-- 
richard