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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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How do I remove a DE from debian? (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I want to remove xfce from my debian 12 system. What is the best way to do it?

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

I think that: sudo apt purge xfce4* sudo apt autoremove

should do it.

I’ll point out that the other answers here are also correct. It depends on how you want to clean it from your system.

“apt remove” will only remove the packages, not the config files
“apt purge” will remove the packages and config files
“apt autoremove” will clean up the orphaned dependencies
“xfce4” will only remove the DE
“xfce4*” will remove the DE and most of the other packages that come with xfce

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can combine all of those with apt remove --auto-remove --purge xfce4*

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

hat would be a good way to remove any depe

apt --purge autoremove xfce4

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

When I did this on Ubuntu, when I shut down I still see some stuff from xfce

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not every package that comes with xfce has a name that starts with xfce4, just most of them do. You may need to identify and remove other packages too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

This is why I hate apt

In NixOS when you remove the package from the list of packages you don't have the symlinks pointing to it anymore, so it is like it's not there (you can garbage collect it)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

That's a lot easier than my method of loading synaptic, searching the DE name, then marking everything for removal.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Thanks. This is helpful