What LIB and DEV packages can I remove?

[kortsen]

I promised myself I wouldn't do it this time. I tried real hard. But I couldn't resist the temptation. I tried to install a tarball. After multiple chokes and pukes I finally got pointed to a DEB package for the program I wanted. I may never get those 6 hours of my life back, but I want my Gig of disk space back.

In the process of (unsuccessfully) trying to install Ktoshiba I installed all kinds of Header and Dev libraries for X, KDE, QT3, QT-MT, HAL, and whatnot. If I hold true to what I swore, "NEVER AGAIN!", I don't need them anymore. But where do I start? There were over 100 packages installed.

Would I be better off backing up /home and reinstalling?

[dibl]

Re: What LIB and DEV packages can I remove?

Unless you kept a list of those 100 packages and support files, I'm not sure how you would ever know what to remove.

:P

There are ways to list all the installed packages on your system -- I forget off the top of my head, but I know it has been the subject of multiple posts on this forum. But, it only works if you know which ones you are looking for. If you're like me, the list would glaze your eyes over, but not help you nail the bad boys that you are after.

Failing that, I think you have referred to the only other option.

[Snowhog]

Re: What LIB and DEV packages can I remove?

Checkout this post.

[kortsen]

Re: What LIB and DEV packages can I remove?

. . . The rest generates a list with the dates that the packages were downloaded to your box, which 99.9% of the time is the date of installation.

That sounded like the perfect solution Snowdog. All the packages were DLd and installed on November 10th. But that thread was a red herring. Look at these 2 examples.

48K 2007-10-30 14:03 libqt3-mt-dev_3%3a3.3.8really3.3.7-0ubuntu11.1_i386.deb
1.7M 2007-11-05 19:05 libqt4-core_4.3.2-0ubuntu3.1_i386.deb

And this package I installed today, November 19th.

1.3M 2007-10-04 14:06 synaptic_0.60ubuntu5_i386.deb