MX Linux Forum

Hi all,

I have installed MX Linux on my daughters (8-years old) laptop. But with MX Linux comes a lot of stuff my daughter or me will never use. How safe is it to remove applications? I like to keep the MX tools/utilities software since i find this a neat replenishment to MX Linux. Any applications pre-installed who has some ties/knots/links with the MX tools/utilities?

Thanks!

Reasonably safe,
if you do all removals via Synaptic which will maintain a History of additions and removals.
Remove things one at a time.
If a removal candidate wants to remove things that seem useful, then decline the removal and try another.

If something breaks, then you have a history and can then reinstall the required pieces.

That said, unless you are really strapped for disk space, they won't cause a problem,
unless there is some capability that you would rather remove.

Unless you are really short of disk space, another option is to hide the item in the Whisker menu, so you won't see it.

To do this, use the MX Menu Editor, select an item, then check the 'Hide' box. Click 'Save Changes', and exit. Reverse the process to restore items.

Chris

Synaptic will also let you know if removing something will also remove other packages. Many programs also depend on many other packages, and removing them makes those autoremovable, since nothing else needs those. Those can be checked and removed in the Status section in Synaptic, or on the command line with apt.

To all,

Thanks for your reply!

The reason i want to remove some applications is for the plain reason it will never be used, so why keep it installed? I have removed some applications of which i know it will never be used. Others i just hide it in the menu if that particular application has some "links" to another installed application or if it removes applications/libraries/other system files needed to run Linux/MX Linux.

Disc space is not big issue here: We don't download stuff using Bittorrent or Usenet, so no need for extra, extra, extra big hard drive.

Linux cluttering? Not really. I clean up Linux using the following terminal commands:
sudo apt autoclean
sudp apt autoremove
sudo apt clean

I have been using Bleachbit in the past and it does perform miracles cleaning up shitty stuff applications won't clean up (even after setting it up to clean up when closing). Oh yes, on my laptop with Mint i am using Deborphan (plus the GTK GUI environment) to clean up left overs (which also increases disc space). But i found that deborphan is NOT for the faint hearted folks (be careful with this tool, the wrong configuration can clean up your whole disc!). But still using it and loving it!

The 3 terminal commands however remains my favourite cleaning options and i run it in a single go: I'm kinda drifting off here i think.... anyway, thanks again for the replies!

Since "apt clean" cleans out the entire apt cache, it makes "apt autoclean" redundant, since that only removes obsolete packages from the cache.

HTH!

As a follow up, I would like to remove LibreOffice. I am running MX on liveUSB.

My question: if I remove LibreOffice should I see any improvement in speed?
Or more generally, does removing more packages increase the speed of MX? Is there a correlation?

The USB is 16GB, have 4GB free, and I use persistence_all with a computer that has 8GB Ram.

Also, I assume using Synaptic would be the easiest way? I ran through the caveats here: https://mxlinux.org/wiki/help-files/help-synaptic/

Yeri wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2019 1:10 pm As a follow up, I would like to remove LibreOffice. I am running MX on liveUSB.

My question: if I remove LibreOffice should I see any improvement in speed?
Or more generally, does removing more packages increase the speed of MX? Is there a correlation?

The USB is 16GB, have 4GB free, and I use persistence_all with a computer that has 8GB Ram.

Also, I assume using Synaptic would be the easiest way? I ran through the caveats here: https://mxlinux.org/wiki/help-files/help-synaptic/

No speed gain at all.

But you'll be free of any Libreoffice security updates, which may take a while, depending on your hardware.

Ok, thanks for the replies.

Glad I asked before picking out selected software. Was thinking it would be more efficient like the first poster stated.
The updates are no problem really.