How do I remove a DE from debian?

BearPear@lemmy.world to Linux@lemmy.ml – 47 points –

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

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apt remove --auto-remove xfce4

That's the way. However, I'd like to add that when I used Debian, I regularly got leftovers after uninstalling things, especially when removing big things work lots of dependencies. So expect some dependencies to remain.

That's just how package managers seem to work in my experience. Even using --purge on APT leaves behind a ton of junk.

--purge does not do anything with dependencies. You will need to explicitly remove all packages that are marked as installed manually, i. e. all packages that you pointed a package manager to install. If a DE was installed automatically by Debian installer, or if you installed it with apt install xfce4, the only manually installed component it the xfce4 metapackage, and using the --auto-remove flag will remove all its dependencies. But if you additionally installed any components or packages that depend on that components, you will also need to clean them up manually.

But if you additionally installed any components or packages that depend on that components, you will also need to clean them up manually.

Doesn't --autoremove purge do that?