[SOLVED] Removing Unity, Gnome and their config files

[doctordruidphd]

My system (12.04) has gotten somewhat messy, as I have kubuntu, but also Unity and some version or other of gnome installed, also apparently gdm and lightdm. Neither unity nor gnome work properly, so I would like to remove them completely, along with their configuration files, and reinstall them from scratch WITHOUT destroying my existing kde desktop and other installed software. Is there a simple way of doing this? I suppose one way would be to look up the dependencies for ubuntu-desktop and start "apt-get remove --purge" one by one, but I'm hoping there is some easier way. I do want to have at least Unity available in the event that kde fails for some reason, as some things are much more easily fixed through a gui.

[SteveRiley]

Try searching for "psychocats pure kde" -- IIRC, that guy's blog had a good one-line command for that.

[doctordruidphd]

Thanks, but I would seriously recommend AGAINST cutting and pasting that command. It will, for example, remove gstreamer (and firefox, and thunderbird), which might not be what you (and definitely is not what I) want to do. It looks like it might be useable as a checklist, though, with some careful modifications. thanks for the pointer.

[SteveRiley]

While it's true that command will remove the packages, the last portion

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

will bring back everything that's shared between Ubuntu and Kubuntu. This would include GStreamer, but not Firefox or Thunderbird, since Kubuntu no longer includes these. Per-user configuration files won't be deleted, so you should then be able to reinstall Firefox and Thunderbird and return to your prior state. A possible second step after reinstalling applications would be to follow with

sudo apt-get --purge autoremove

will remove left-over system configuration files.

I tried the Psyochat command on a Natty installation that I polluted with a mix of distros, and was pleased by the results. Haven't tried it since then, though.

[doctordruidphd]

OK, thanks. I'm pretty untrusting of package related stuff, ever since aptitude removed my entire system once, a long time ago.
I think what I'm going to do is break the command up into several smaller parts, and watch carefully what each part wants to delete. That seems to be the safest way, not forgetting good backups.

[vw72]

Actually, I've had some issues with the pure kubuntu command from psychocats, that I reported the other day. At least going from Ubuntu, some settings somewhere are not getting cleaned out and it is causing instability and lags in KDE. These problems are not there with a clean install of Kubuntu.

If you already have an Ubuntu system that you have installed KDE on, and it is working well, you can install the synaptic package manager and then view packages by status, setting the status to installed. Next search for unity and start removing what ever the search results bring up. Same for gnome. You do need to be a little careful, because sum of those items are also used by KDE and Kubuntu, so when deleting a package, look at the list of what else it is going to remove and make sure it doesn't include kde stuff.

Another option would be to back up your home directory (including hidden files and folders) and then do a clean install of Kubuntu. Then before logging in the gui, hit ctrl-alt-F1 to open the console, log in and then copy the home directory back. When done hit exit to log out of the console and then ctrl-alt-F7 to go back to the gui login, login in and all of your settings should be in place. (Note, if you have /home on a separate partition, then you can just re/install Kubuntu and use the same user name and everything will be there).

Either method should work, personally, the remove the various packages is usually the quicker of the two.

[doctordruidphd]

Thanks for the reply. Any command that long, run as "sudo", is just asking for it. I am using the synaptic method, as you suggested, pulling things out a few at a time.

The real problem is that I have quite a few things I use that depend on gnome libraries (gimp and libreoffice among them, but quite a few others) so a complete whack of everything "gnome" would be a disaster. The "clean install" is also a no-go, as I have, over the years, compiled and installed quite a bit of software, some of which took weeks to get working, and I don't much fancy going through all that again. So it's hunt-and-kill item by item at this point; may take a while, but it's the safest way.

[vw72]

Given your setup, search on unity and remove it first. It shouldn't impact your installed apps. Searching gnome is a little trickier as the a lot of apps, as you describe depend on certain gnome libraries. The good news is that even if you accidently uninstall one, say gimp, simply reinstalling it will add the library back and all of your previous settings will still be there.

[OneLine]

Logs

The Synaptic and the Muon package managers are keeping history logs or parsing the apt/dpkg log.

Checking installed/updated/removed packages from the dpkg log (command line):

Recent status log:

grep "status installed" /var/log/dpkg.log

grep upgrade /var/log/dpkg.log

grep remove /var/log/dpkg.log

A bit older dpkg log:

grep "status installed" /var/log/dpkg.log.1

grep upgrade /var/log/dpkg.log.1

grep remove /var/log/dpkg.log.1

The oldest logs - rotated dpkg logs (packed): dpkg.log.2.gz, dpkg.log.3.gz...


How did you install the desktops ?

The logs and the list of installed packages can be used to purge the unwanted packages.

Example:

Looking packages installed 2012-06-24 /1/:

grep -E "2012-06-24.*status installed" /var/log/dpkg.log.1 | cut -d ' ' -f5

At here:

man-db
germinate
virtualbox-guest-additions-iso
virtualbox-dkms
man-db
rar

The output can be piped to the file, edited, and the file can be used to purge packages /2/.


When testing/experimenting

Keeping own logs. There is the logsave command

man logsave:

NAME
logsave - save the output of a command in a logfile

SYNOPSIS
logsave [ -asv ] logfile cmd_prog [ ... ]

DESCRIPTION
The logsave program will execute cmd_prog with the specified argument(s), and save a copy of its out‐
put to logfile. If the containing directory for logfile does not exist, logsave will accumulate the
output in memory until it can be written out. A copy of the output will also be written to standard
output....

Links

1. http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/10/...not-operators/
2. http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=40160

[doctordruidphd]

Interesting. Thanks for the info on the logs. These things have been hanging around for several upgrades (gnome from 8.10, I think) so I doubt the logs from that are still there. But that might be hope if something gets deleted that shouldn't have. As I said, it's hunt-and-kill with synaptic at this point.

[Gaba]

I tried the psychocats command because I wanted to do the exact same thing as doctordruidphd here. It pretty much broke my system and I was left with no graphical interface whatsoever. Had to install XFCE to be able to use KDE again.

[doctordruidphd]

Might try:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall kubuntu-desktop

Unfortunately any command that removes that much stuff in one whack is going to break things.
What I did was go through everything with "gnome" or "unity" in it using Synaptic, paying very close attention to what was being removed. With all that I was really only able to clear out about 5gb of space.

Removing most of the old kernels and their header files can save a lot more space, but here again, be careful what you are chopping. Keep at least one or two of the previous ones around just in case.