How To COMPLETELY Remove Applications On Linux

Some of the most common Linux support questions involve package management tasks such as updating, installing and removing software. And regarding removing software, one of the most frequently asked questions is: how can I completely remove an application? This is because simply uninstalling a program doesn't remove it's dependencies and/or configuration files.

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[DarthGamer]

You're telling me I didn't have to distro hop every time I wanted to uninstall a program?

[arianh]

This video was so important to be in the channel! Thanks DT...

[Dutch]

Good video for somebody like me, completely new to Linux. I read through the comments below until I realized they are pretty much over my head, but you instruct so well in a very clear straightforward manner, that I'm just going to pay attention to you. Thank You.

[buuf]

Also in Synaptic package manager you can chose option "Mark for complete removal", and that will work like purge command.

[QuotePilgrim]

A package manager does know about program's you've built from source, if you build a package and install it through the package manager. On Arch this process is so simple there's a user maintained repository of files from which you can automatically build and install packages from source.

Also, it's pretty common for makefiles to have an uninstall target, so if you have installed a program that way, you can often do "sudo make uninstall" from its source directory to remove it. In fact the makefile you showed as an example even has it 😆

[kychemclass]

Hey DT. More Linux tutorials please! :D Tq for all you've done so far.

[hcuofpn]

Thank you have learnt so much from you and chris titus tech, JustAGuy Linux over the last two months. As a long time windows user (98 to win10? To big and loaded with stuff that I never used) I was so used to changing something in windows and waiting for the blue screen of death that I just stopped changing things. You have give me the confidence to try things in Linux and make the system suit me thank you again keep up the good work.

[HatsuSixtyOne]

The "--delete-data" flag for flatpak deletes the app data inside ".var/app" in your home directory.

[christianvl]

As usual, great content. Please, consider adding a tutorial to remove old snaps (looks like updated snaps also keeps the old version installed) and also instructions to remove old kernels (using Neon for over 2 years, I've realized all my old kernels were preserved in the system - not removed by pkcon or apt).

BTW, pkcon also deserves some attention as it works (and usually is installed by default) across many different distros.

[MyAmazingUsername]

Your "find" usage is wrong. You can't just do "find ungoogled" because that just finds files exactly named "ungoogled" and nothing else. You need asterisks to expand the matching to "anywhere in file name".

My favorite way to remove user configs:

find ~ -iname "*theappname*"

Most of the time the config files are named something related to the app, so this finds them.

Can also do it globally with:

sudo find / -iname "*theappname*"

If an app contains spaces, it is unclear how they name their files. An app named "Audio Editor" could name its filed AudioEditor, Audio_Editor, Audio.Editor, etc. You can fix that by using wildcards in the middle since that means "zero or more of any character" so it will catch them all:

sudo find / -iname "*audio*editor*"

[arnonart]

ana amazing tutorial! straight forward and understandable even to some dummies like myself. thanks!

[alx]

Few more things to add:
- "apt clean" to clean packages cache
- most of the Makefiles also provide dist-clean or similar targets to "uninstall" the stuff you installed with "install". If they don't - chase developers to add that :)

[johannesjung]

An additional info regarding apt: You can combine purging and autoremove in one command: sudo apt purge program --auto-remove 😉

[pavfrang]

Thank you for the great informational video!!

[besnikrrustemi]

Hey DT, any plans on doing a music player tier list video ? or maybe video players as well ?, i think those two categories didn't get covered that much lately.

Love all your videos.

[vadimcitinuk]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience

[elclippo]

I typically run

$ apt purge <package>
$ apt autoremove —purge

in order to also remove the config files of the dependent packages.

[busyrand]

Thank you for the thorough deep dive... I didn't know that I needed to know all of this stuff, but you helped me understand things in totality. I really do wish there was a uniform, pointed and click way to install things in the Linux World because it would give a uniform starting place to ask questions from. I'm having trouble installing an AppImage. The run option never appeared, and I miss having the feedback from the terminal installation that would at least let me know if it installed/ran/whatever... I shouldn't have to question whether or not a process is done on my computer, or whether it was successful... I left Windows because of that vary thing. Thank you abundantly though, and I wish anyone who sees this the absolute best....

[thoughtfulriderakj]

The best video that was needed ... Specially for Visual Studio Code 😅

[thravenpurple]

thanks for the grear video DT! I hope you make a video about pip install