by Caitlin » 2018-02-18 17:07
Every time you install a package by name, up to hundreds of other packages gets installed with it.
When a package is developed, the programmer builds it, generally, with the latest and greatest versions of the libraries. This means even if you have all the libraries already on your system, they will automatically be upgraded when the package you chose is installed, even if it would have worked with the versions you already had.
Another problem is when one package draws on some functionality from something else, and that something else is stated specifically rather than generically. I may have the details wrong, but somewhere deep in KWrite a beep is generated if something goes wrong, and to produce that beep means the entire VLC music system has to be installed also, along with phonon, which VLC needs. The programmer liked VLC, so everybody's going to have VLC whether they want it or not.
Still another problem is recommended packages -- where one package is enhanced by some other package being there, even though that other package is not strictly required. This one is easy to fix; I specify --no-install-recommends with every apt-get.
If you try to get rid of this "crapware", as I call it, it then wants to deinstall the package you originally wanted. This is a problem, and is one of the major headaches of the apt system design.
You can de-install single packages with dpkg -force-depends but this really isn't a solution. If anybody has any suggestions as how to best remove crapware, let me know.
The bottom line is that those 1400 packages can't be uninstalled because they are considered to be installed and in use in your system.
Caitlin
