How to uninstall pre-installed application software in Debian GNOME environment

How to uninstall the preinstalled GNOME applications

I just installed Debian “Bullseye” with GNOME, but it comes with a lot of unwanted applications which I want to remove. I went ahead and searched for the corresponding package names. I also checked if a given application can be removed in the software center.

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The following command purges every application that could be removed in the software center:

apt purge aisleriot cheese evolution five-or-more four-in-a-row gnome-2048 gnome-calendar gnome-chess gnome-clocks gnome-color-manager gnome-contacts gnome-disk-utility gnome-documents gnome- klotski gnome-logs gnome-mahjongg gnome-maps gnome-mines gnome-music gnome-nibbles gnome-robots gnome-sound-recorder gnome-shell-extension-prefs gnome-sudoku gnome-taquin gnome-tetravex gnome-todo gnome-tweaks gnome -weather hitori iagno im-config libreoffice-calc libreoffice-draw libreoffice-impress libreoffice-writer lightsoff malcontent nautilus quadrapassel rhythmbox seahorse shotwell simple-scan software-properties-gtk swell-foop synaptic tali transmis sion-gtk

This additional command purges the applications that can only be removed through the terminal. (I didn’t include network-manager-gnome and gnome-terminal since removing these will cause a lot of annoyance.)

apt purge baobab eog evince file-roller firefox-esr gedit gnome-calculator gnome-characters gnome-font-viewer gnome-screenshot gnome-software gnome-system-monitor libreoffice-common totem yelp

Finally, the following command combines the two above:

apt purge aisleriot baobab cheese eog evince evolution file-roller firefox-esr five-or-more four-in-a-row gedit gnome-2048 gnome-calculator gnome-calendar gnome-characters gnome-chess gnome-clocks gnome- color-manager gnome-contacts gnome-disk-utility gnome-documents gnome-font-viewer gnome-klotski gnome-logs gnome-mahjongg gnome-maps gnome-mines gnome-music gnome-nibbles gnome-robots gnome-screenshot gnome-software gnome -sound-recorder gnome-shell-extension-prefs gnome-sudoku gnome-system-monitor gnome-taquin gnome-tetravex gnome-todo gnome-tweaks gnome-weather hitori iagno im-config libreoffice-calc libreoffice-common libreoffice-draw libreoffice- impress libreoffice-writer lightsoff malcontent nautilus quadrapassel rhythmbox seahorse shotwell simple-scan software-properties-gtk swell-foop synaptic tali totem transmission-gtk yelp

Is there a better way to achieve a minimal install than running the commands above?

The answer is:

The gnome metapackage is not aimed at providing a minimal install, but a full install, with an office suite, photo viewers, games, etc.

@mashuptwice has a good comment that will work for an installation “from-scratch”, but it’s possible to get into that same state without re-installing your machine.

I had experienced previously that uninstalling evolution will uninstall the packages that depend on it (i.e. gnome). Doing that will mark other dependencies (e.g. gnome-core) for autoremoval unless they are explicitly marked as manually installed.

If you want the Gnome desktop environment without the “extra components”, take a look at the Depends:, Recommends: and Suggests: section and choose which parts you want to manually install:

$ apt show gnome
Package: gnome
Section: metapackages
...
Depends:
 gnome-core,
 desktop-base,
 network-manager-gnome,
 libproxy1-plugin-networkmanager,
 cheese,
 file-roller,
 gnome-calendar,
 gnome-clocks,
 gnome-color-manager,
 gnome-documents,
 gnome-maps,
 gnome-music,
 shotwell | gnome-photos,
 gnome-screenshot,
 gnome-todo,
 gnome-weather,
 orca,
 rygel-playbin,
 rygel-tracker,
 simple-scan,
 avahi-daemon,
 evolution,
 gnome-sound-recorder,
 gnome-tweaks,
 libreoffice-gnome,
 libreoffice-writer,
 libreoffice-calc,
 libreoffice-impress,
 libgsf-bin,
 rhythmbox,
 seahorse,
 xdg-user-dirs-gtk,
 cups-pk-helper,
 evolution-plugins,
 gedit-plugins,
 gstreamer1.0-libav,
 gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly,
 rhythmbox-plugins,
 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder,
 totem-plugins
Recommends:
 nautilus-extension-brasero,
 gnome-remote-desktop,
 gnome-games,
 transmission-gtk
Suggests:
 Alacarte,
 empathy,
 goobox | sound-juicer,
 polari,
 vinagre,
 webext-ublock-origin,
 firefox-esr-l10n-all | firefox-l10n-all

Steps:

1. Choose the components you want,
2. Either sudo apt install ... or sudo apt-mark manual ... each of these components. This will mark them as “manually installed “.
3. sudo apt purge gnome to remove the gnome metapackage.
4. sudo apt autoremove to remove all of gnome‘s dependencies which were not manually installed.

You’ll note that things like gnome-chess are not listed in the dependencies here. They are further down the tree (brought in by gnome-games). You probably don’t want to deal with dependencies of dependencies, that’s frustrating. Just deal with the metapackage and everything else will be taken care of.

Uninstall xfce4 completely

apt purge xfconf xfce4-utils xfwm4 xfce4-session thunar xfdesktop4 exo-utils xfce4-panel xfce4-terminal
###

apt purge libxfce4util-common
apt autoremove