(no subject)
Feb. 27th, 2019 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellwaywhy doesn't Synaptic have a button for "uninstall this software *and all software that is here purely as a prerequisite for this one*"
okay, okay, I know why, it'd have to keep track of whether you've installed anything else since then that *also* needs the prerequisite, and maybe you've started using some non-Synaptic program that needs it, and a false positive on whether to get rid of a piece of infrastructure could end up disastrous
and yeah, it's not like my laptop is hurting for storage space
and yeah, if I really cared that much I probably *could*--when I'm testing out programs knowing that the likelihood any given one will work for what I need is fairly low--just keep copies of the lists of prerequisites-to-be-installed and go through and uninstall them individually if I don't keep the main program (especially if it's same-day)
(and god, maybe I will)
but it still kind of bugs me having the detritus of unused prerequisites gradually build up on a laptop the longer I use it, seems so *untidy*
---
(this post brought to you by trying to get a (very old) external webcam working on my laptop; eventually I gave up and borrowed Mom's laptop to use her built-in webcam)
okay, okay, I know why, it'd have to keep track of whether you've installed anything else since then that *also* needs the prerequisite, and maybe you've started using some non-Synaptic program that needs it, and a false positive on whether to get rid of a piece of infrastructure could end up disastrous
and yeah, it's not like my laptop is hurting for storage space
and yeah, if I really cared that much I probably *could*--when I'm testing out programs knowing that the likelihood any given one will work for what I need is fairly low--just keep copies of the lists of prerequisites-to-be-installed and go through and uninstall them individually if I don't keep the main program (especially if it's same-day)
(and god, maybe I will)
but it still kind of bugs me having the detritus of unused prerequisites gradually build up on a laptop the longer I use it, seems so *untidy*
---
(this post brought to you by trying to get a (very old) external webcam working on my laptop; eventually I gave up and borrowed Mom's laptop to use her built-in webcam)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-28 09:37 pm (UTC)(I am not *100%* incompetent at command line, but I have enough other things I want to do that improving my command-line skill has never really been a priority. I've never sat down and made any systematic attempt to learn what my options are, merely picked up some things piecemeal over the years as they came up. I do sometimes learn after the fact that there was a command that *would* have been useful if I had only thought to check whether it existed.)
I'm pretty sure I *do* have some manually-installed software, so I probably would not dare to try autoremoval, but I am pleased to learn that it does in fact exist.