Re: Return a Debian system to a pristine state
John Hasler wrote:
> Victor writes:
> > We are all familiar with the situation when after a long period of
> > usage, a system becomes full of software which we once installed for
> > some purpose and then abandoned or disused.
>
> No, we aren't. I've been running Debian since 1.1 was released and have
> never experienced that problem.
Maybe you document every package you install?
>
> > A gentle hint on what is an <unwanted package> would be very much
> > appreciated at such moments.
>
> How could a package management system possibly know that?
That's where we come to my original question. A package management
system cannot possibly know that, but it can save a list of packages
present at the time of installation, for later comparison/rollback.
Or I could have saved this list manually if I had known, or derive it
from installation/apt logs.
I however was erroneously assuming that this information was already saved
somewhere and available for use, hence my original question. I did not
expect a harsh reaction actually, as if I was saying a heresy.
>
> Perhaps what you want is something which will tell you which programs
> have gone unused for the longest time.
That would be nice too.
But it would probably require the definition of a "program" which maybe
some entity more abstract than a package.
--
Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/
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