While working with some new field work, you may install more than one software to check which one is best for you. For example, if you want to get Image editor software, you would likely to install more than one software.
But after giving some try, you may wish to remove many software as it didn't fit to your expectation or taking to much resources of your system. In this situation, you want to completely remove the software.
In this article, we will go through how to completely remove the previously installed software and its dependencies. There are many ways to remove the software.
From Ubuntu Software
This is easy and safe way to remove the package from the system. To remove software, first open Ubuntu Software appliation
After then click on Installed tab to get the list of all installed software. It will give the list of all installed software.
Now go to the software as you want to remove and click on Remove button against software. A popup window will ask if you want to remove the software. Click on Remove tab.
When you click Remove button, it will ask for user authentication. Input the password and click on Authenticate button. This will remove the package and its dependencies also.
There is one limitation that you can only see the GUI software in the list, so if you have installed packages like git, then it will not see in the list. To see all the installed packages, you can use command line interface which is more useful.
Remove package from Command line
To remove package from command line, you should have root user access. First open the Terminal from the menu or using shortcut key CTRL + ALT + T.
dpkg is the standard package manager for Debian based distribution system. To remove the package from the system, you should know the package name registered in system.
To see all the package installed in the system, run the bellow command.
sudo dpkg --list
This will display all package list with details.
In addition to dpkg, Ubuntu has its own apt package manager which manages all packages. You can also get simple list with apt command.
apt list
You can also search for exact package name, for example if you want to search for skype then use bellow command.
apt list *skype*
This will return only list which has skype word in the package.
To remove the only package, run the bellow command
sudo apt-get remove packagename
If you also want to remove software setting files also, then run the bellow command.
sudo apt-get purge packagename
If you completely remove the pacakge with its dependencies also, then run the bellow command.
sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove packagename
This command will completely remove the package with its dependiencies.
You can remove orphaned or unnecessary dependencies with bellow command.
sudo apt-get autoremove
If you have any failed packages which you could not remove, then you can repaire with the bellow command.
sudo apt-get –f install
This way, you can manage all packages in your Ubuntu system.
