[Solved] How to remove a package that ties with core ones?

[JanPenguin]

I have this package dependency question for a while.

I have brand new Squeeze system. I selected desktop during installation. Gnome is default system but I turned off gdm3 and uses fluxbox as window manager.

I understand if two packages are tied together funtionally so that removal of either package terminates one feature. Above cases, many small packages only depends on the core packages. The core packages work fine without games, other programs.

There are so many programs that I want to remove in the system. For examples, ekiga is a VoIP program that I never use it. When I tried to remove it using apt-get or aptitude, it suggests entire gnome packages will be removed also, which is illogical. The only solution I found is I need to manually remove the package files. I haven't tried it yet.

[vbrummond]

There is the concept of the 'metapackage'. A metapackage is a package that exists simply to depend on other packages so you can install them in a collection. The packages "gnome" and "gnome-desktop-environment" are examples of these. Just removing "gnome" will not remove any packages. Carefull inspect specific package names (such as "nautilus" "empathy") to really see what is being removed. If just ekiga and gnome are being removed it is quite safe to do so.

Note though it may mark packages for auto-removal, just do not blindly run apt-get autoremove and they will stay installed.

Hope that answers your query.

[JanPenguin]

@ vbrummond

Thanks. It works. I played with few packages that depends on meta packages: gnome, gnome-desktop-environment, xorg, and etc.

[secipolla]

For the autoremovable packages you can run 'aptitude unmarkauto' on them and they won't be marked to be automatically removed (but then if you want to remove'em you'll have to do it explicitly).