I decided to look at different desktop environments, set KDE to start (setting the recommendations in the aptitude settings off) ( aptitude install kde-plasma-desktop kwin-x11 ), looked and deleted ( aptitude purge kde-plasma-desktop kwin-x11 ), and also executed dpkg --purge $(dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | cut -f1) because configs were not dpkg --purge $(dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | cut -f1) for some reason, after this the system returned to the same state as before the installation (except in ~ / hidden directories did not go away), started installing gnome ( aptitude install gnome ), looked and deleted in the same way ( aptitude purge gnome and dpkg --purge $(dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | cut -f1) but I have a lot of demons left to work and there is less space per gigabyte than before the installation, why? And how can I make sure that this does not happen?

    1 answer 1

    as advised in the debian wiki , you need to remove the packages containing the word gnome in the title.

    and there, and you use, as it seems to me, slightly overloaded structures. You can use the search terms :

     $ sudo aptitude purge '~ignome'

    and to completely remove ( purge ) information about remote packages (including configuration files), instead of:

     $ sudo aptitude purge $(dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | cut -f 1)

    much more elegant to write:

     $ sudo aptitude purge '~c'

    and about the “why” you need to look at a specific situation: what packages did you have before the experiment, which were installed / removed during the experiment, which remained installed at the end of the experiment, and investigate the dependencies due to which some of the packages that depended on dependencies were not removed by removing the package that they were installed on.

    for example: you have some kind of package п1 , it says in its dependencies: п2 | п3 п2 | п3 (i.e., “n2 or n3”), and п2 set to satisfy this dependence.

    and here you are installing the п4 package for the experiment, which says: п3 . accordingly, package п3 will be installed.

    you get four packages installed: п1 , п2 , п3 and п4 .

    Finally, you remove the p4 package, expecting that the п3 package will also be removed: after all, it was established as a dependency together with п4 .

    however, it did not happen at all: as far as I remember, the п3 package will not be deleted due to the fact that it is present in the number of dependencies of the п1 package.

    and in order to make “total confusion in the head,” remember that packages link not only “simply dependencies” depends (which can be variable: “package 1 or package 2 or ...”), but also recommends , suggests and conflicts . and when installing packages like gnome (which, in fact, is a meta-package, i.e., just a set of dependencies), thousands of packages can be installed based on cross-dependencies, forming (together with the packages that were before) "hellish" a multiply connected graph, which, after removing the “starter” packet ( gnome ), can be brought to a consistent state in hundreds (thousands? millions?) of different ways, and only one of these methods will “return” to you exactly the set of packets that you have was before the installation of the "starter".