how to remove unused installations
 

Hi,
I am using rpmdrake of mandrake to install and uninstall apps. During installation, it finds the dependencies to install and installs those as well upon request.

But, whn uninstalling, are those depencies removed too? Or they reside in my comp for ever till i manually remove them?

Is there anyway to find unused apps and uninstall them easily? I am more used to install and uninstall software frequently...

Regards,
Shyam

urpmi (mandrake's installer/uninstaller) removes dependancies when possible. It will warn you if the library/dependency is being used by another program, before it's removed, and allow you to skip that.

To be honest, libraries take very little space. I'd be more worried about games or picture/music files than I would with the few k that a library might take up. Some, such as GTK, take up a lot of room, but they are pretty much required. The rest are simply not worth worrying about, unless you've already eliminated everything else you can.

Last note: It's not "quite" as important to remove unused apps/libraries in Linux as it is in windows. When a library/app resides on windows, there's usually some part of it running, taking up some space on the computer, or offering an vulnerability to the closest virus. On Linux, an unused program simply sits on your drive doing nothing more than wasting space. If it's not called, it's not called. For "speed" reasons, Windows isn't effecient enough to wait until the last minute to use something, so everything has to hang around in memory, greatly increasing your exposure to vulnerablilities.

Old habits die hard, especially old, bad habits... but don't worry, you'll get over the withdrawal pangs in time.

Scott_R is right. You are not using Windows, you're using Linux. Linux is not Windows, and because of that, many "adjustments" that you're used to making for Windows' weaknesses are no longer necessary.

The problem here is more being aware that having to hunt down and manually remove dependent sub-processes and libraries of a program you've uninstalled is not normal-- it may be ordinary behaviour that you're used to, but it is not the behaviour of a normal, reasonable, stable OS.

Walking well with a limp is not the same as having two healthy legs--- and one might be surprised that, after hip replacement surgery, one walks less well for a time than one did with the limp. After getting new glasses, one trips and stumbles for the first couple of days, because you can't see as well as you did with the old (misaligned) glasses. Old adjustment habits die hard, but they do, in fairly short order.

You'll soon get used to not having to worry about things that the OS should be taking care of for you anymore, because the OS is actually taking care of them, now ;) .