Removing Thunderbird?

[Skybear]

I just installed Ubuntu on a VM. I don’t need Thunderbird and would like to remove it. In my reading I’ve come across the “remove” and “purge” commands and I think I understand the difference: “remove” deletes just the program but “purge” removes the program and those files that are connected to it. But I’m new to using Ubuntu and to those commands so I thought I’d ask before doing anything.

 

[Condobloke]

If this were my pc, I would delete it via the software centre (is that the correct name for software manager in Ubuntu?),,,followed by :

 sudo apt-get clean
 
  sudo apt-get autoremove --purge

if you wish to see how much disk space is taken up by logs after using the above"

journalctl --disk-usage

mine shows 146.6MB

If you wish to reduce whatever yours is to 100MB....

sudo journalctl --vacuum-size=100M

 

[osprey]

I just installed Ubuntu on a VM. I don’t need Thunderbird and would like to remove it. In my reading I’ve come across the “remove” and “purge” commands and I think I understand the difference: “remove” deletes just the program but “purge” removes the program and those files that are connected to it. But I’m new to using Ubuntu and to those commands so I thought I’d ask before doing anything.

The "remove" option to apt or apt-get will remove a package, but it only removes the package files that were installed when the package was installed. Configuration files may have been set up, or altered after the original installation, so the remove option doesn't remove those configuration files or configuration files in general.

The "purge" option removes configuration files in addition to the other files that a package installs.

Here is an example on a machine here:
First run a command to show which removed packages have left configuration files on the machine:

[root]# apt list '?config-files'
linux-image-7.0.4+deb14-amd64/now 7.0.4-1 amd64 [residual-config]
linux-image-7.0.7+deb14-amd64/now 7.0.7-1 amd64 [residual-config]

The output actually lets the user know there are config files left, in this case for the two linux-image packages shown in this case.

Next one can run apt with the purge option on one of those packages:

[root]# apt purge linux-image-7.0.4+deb14-amd64
<snip>
REMOVING:
  linux-image-7.0.4+deb14-amd64*

Summary:
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 1, Not Upgrading: 0
  Space needed: 0 B / 421 GB available

Continue? [Y/n]
(Reading database… 292632 files and directories currently installed.)
Purging configuration files for linux-image-7.0.4+deb14-amd64 (7.0.4-1)…

Now we expect that no configuration files for the package just purged: linux-image-7.0.4+deb14-amd64, will be left on the machine,which is shown in the output by running the command to show remaining configuration files:

[root]# apt list '?config-files'
linux-image-7.0.7+deb14-amd64/now 7.0.7-1 amd64 [residual-config]

The only configuration files left are those for the other linux-image package which hasn't as yet been purged.

In the case of thunderbird, perhaps first check what depends on it. I don't have it installed, but the following command will show what depends on thunderbird:

apt rdepends thunderbird

If you are happy to have all or any of those dependencies also removed, then it's easy to remove thunderbird. One doesn't need to check this because the apt or apt-get package manager can let the user know what will be removed when the removal command is run. The above examples may provide some means to get a bit more information than just running the GUI apps that can remove packages. Users interests in these matters varies

 

[MikeWalsh]

Guys, I don't run "mainstream" stuff (as you know) - thus, I'm not that 'current' on how the major package managers work - but.....hasn't Ubuntu always included T-Bird as an OOTB "built-in", as part of the ISO / image? I know they used to, back in the days of "Precise" & "Trusty".

Doesn't that require a rather different procedure to that of removing items the user has installed themselves?

Genuinely curious here.


Mike.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Guys, I don't run "mainstream" stuff (as you know) - thus, I'm not that 'current' on how the major package managers work - but.....hasn't Ubuntu always included T-Bird as an OOTB "built-in", as part of the ISO / image? I know they used to, back in the days of "Precise" & "Trusty".

Every distribution besides Arch, Gentoo and NixOS ships with a set of package defaults which usually includes a web-browser(Firefox most of the time) and a e-mail client(Thunderbird or Evolution usually).