Re: Uninstalling Gnome
On Tue, 29 Nov 2016 16:12:52 +0000
Rodolfo Medina <rodolfo.medina@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?
>
Possible, but probably not off the shelf, or someone would have
suggested it by now.
As I said to begin my first reply, the only way to do a proper job is
to start again from scratch, with a minimal text system, no DE, then
add the GUI software of your choice, and your applications.
And you probably want sudo, which as far as I know, is still not
installed by default.
--
Joe
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