Re: how to find why packages are automatically installed?

[Andrew Reid <reidac@bellatlantic.net>]

On Saturday 21 February 2009 20:34:09 Michael M. Moore wrote:

> Maybe there is no "magic package" that is keeping these things installed
> and I just need to selectively remove them one-by-one, along with the
> packages that will break but that I don't want anymore.  I just thought
> I might be missing something obvious about the best way to take care of
> getting rid of a bunch of automatically installed packages relatively
> quickly.
>
> Any advice?

  I can't answer the "why" question, but I use "apt-get autoremove"
and deborphan to prune the installed package list.  Deborphan
has to be installed first, and if you're very brave, you do:

> apt-get remove --purge `deborphan`

  ... repeatedly until it "converges", i.e. runs out of 
packages to remove.

				-- A.
-- 
Andrew Reid / reidac@bellatlantic.net