Re: Uninstalling Gnome
Patrick Bartek <nemommxiv@gmail.com> writes:
> On Tue, 29 Nov 2016 09:11:37 +0000 Rodolfo Medina
> <rodolfo.medina@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> writes:
>>
>> > On Mon 28 Nov 2016 at 21:44:00 +0000, Rodolfo Medina wrote:
>> >
>> >> When I freshly installed Debian on my present system, I chose
>> >> Gnome as my Desktop manager, then I switched to Openbox. To free
>> >> space, now I want to remove all those Gnome packages that I
>> >> haven't used any more but am not sure what of them I may delete
>> >> without perturbing the system. How can I know? More
>> >> in general, is there a way to know what packages one is not using
>> >> and so can be
>> >> removed?
>> >
>> > apt-get purge gnome gnome-shell
>> > apt-get autoremove
>> >
>> > And go from there with 'dpkg -l'.
>>
>>
>> Thanks. But, my question is: how can I be sure and safe that doing
>> so will not perturbing my system?
>
> A few years ago, I attempted to entirely remove GNOME from my system.
> I had switched to the window manager Openbox and no longer needed GNOME
> and all its parts taking up valuble hard drive space. It proved
> impossible (or impractical) to do. GNOME lists OS parts among
> others, lots of others, as dependencies. Most of its utilities do the
> same. GNOME is quite invasive. So, a general "remove" or "purge"
> gnome, etc. would end up removing most of the OS rendering it useless.
> Even trying to uninstall its utilities and apps would result in similar
> situation, a broken system
>
> To make a long story short, I eventually ended up reinstalling the OS
> without any desktop environment, terminal only, then adding X, the
> window manager, etc. It was the only easy way I found to be totally
> GNOMEless.
I wonder if it's possible to provide Debian a set A of packages and say:
`please install these and only these and remove all the other packages present
on the disk except the ones from which some of A depends.' This would be
equivalent of reinstalling everything as reported by Patrick. Do you think it
would be possible?
Rodolfo
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