Uninstalling 3rd Party Software in Mageia 5
 

Simple version: How do you uninstall software in Mageia 5 which was not installed through the repositories?

Long version: I downloaded a Trial Version of SoftMaker Office for Linux and installed it in my new installation of Mageia 5. I then bought the Full Version (I've been using this software, under different names, for nearly a decade, and it's better than any other office package out there, although I have not tried the new KDE office, calligra).

The Full Version would not install, and the error message spent only milliseconds on my screen so I could not tell why.

Eventually, I figured out that, although the Trial and Full versions look different to ME, they report to Mageia that they are the same version. The error message, therefore, was that it was already installed.

I now have, through community efforts and some trial and error plus years of fiddling with Linux flavors (still a n00b, as I haven't settled on anything yet), learned how to install this third-party software. But the Mageia installer does not recognize anything it did not install from its repos, and so I cannot manage (yet) to uninstall the Trial Version. I have not had any help (that I can understand) yet from the Mageia forums, so I thought I'd ask here.

I'm sure it's an RPM command, but my search for it has not resulted in finding anything I understand or which, with n00bie fumbling attempts, has succeeded.

The latest package version for an RPM based OS :
softmaker-freeoffice-697.i386.rpm / softmaker-freeoffice-697.x86_64.rpm

Checking the name of an installed package : $ rpm -qa | grep softmaker
( I get this reply : softmaker-freeoffice-2012-697 )

The rpm command for removing a package, example :
# rpm -e softmaker-freeoffice-2012-697

The rpm command for updating / installing a package, example :
# rpm -Uvh softmaker-freeoffice-697.x86_64.rpm


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Thank you. It didn't quite work that way, but I just got it solved about 30 minutes ago with help on the Mageia Forum. My problem on uninstalling is that I did not ask it to uninstall softmaker-office, I tried to get it to install softmaker-office-2012-398.i386.rpm. In other words, overthinking it. Once the original package was uninstalled, the new one installed with a simple double-click on the package icon.