how do i remove programs?
 

in windows i just find the uninstaller, or use add/remove programs. i installed NWN just to see what it was like to play a game on linux. i like it, but i dont play it often enough to justify the roughly 2G of space it is taking up on my 30G HD.

id like to know how to uninstall/remove it without screwing things up.

thanks for the heads up.

If the software install was a RPM you can find out how to remove RPMs and other information by typing RPM --help in a terminal.

I think what you are looking for is rpm -e name of package

I know Red Hat and Fedora use RPMs and I thanks mandrake does to. If the install was not a RPM package it wont help

thanks, but it was from a tar.gz source install.

guess i should of been more specific on how it was installed.

I guess it depends. OpenOffice.org, for example, can be removed by running ./setup and choosing "remove". See the programs website for docs, that usually helps.

On RPM based systems, use the rpm command, as aaronruss said.

On Slackware based systems, run pkgtool, then choose "remove".

You can always remove it manually, tho, if you know how the package is installed. What files the installation has generated and where...


This is a question I've been wondering myself, too. Maybe some more experienced user could tell that.

Regards,
Bamse

If you installed it by
./configure
make
make install
if you still have the source directory where you ran the installation, some programs have an uninstall feature
make uninstall

cd /your/source_directory/
then run the command: make uninstall
The program will be removed.

ok thanks guys.

Just one more add to this:
In case you have deleted your source directory (which you might have, because there isn't much reason you would keep it after installation if you aren't really keened on modifying the sources yourself) then you can run untar the sources again, run ./configure with the same parameters again, run make again and then you can run make uninstall and the whole thing will be uninstalled.

If installed from binary: Depends on distro, might be "emerge -Cp" "rpm -e" "apt-get remove"

If from source: usually go back into the directory where you compiled and did "make install" and run "make uninstall". If you've deleted that directory there's probably no record as to where it installed its files.

if i remember correctly the NWN.tar.gz (not full file names) auto installed when i tar zxvf file.tar.gz and made thier own subdirectory in my /home/EU dir.

is it safe to just rm -R /home/EU/NWN

?

Lleb_KCir

Just as a side note take a look at

Checkinstall

To late now but may be useful for future use

Pete

It is safe but if your program also installed shared libraries or pixmaps or commands in the /usr/bin or /bin directory then those files won't be removed. In order to uninstall programs I untar the directory again, then run
./configure <same parameters as first time>
make
sudo make install
sudo make uninstall

The make install line will overwrite your previous installation and will recreate the uninstall scripts which will containd information about all the files you installed (which are the same as the first time you installed them). When running sudo make uninstall the program is removed completely. After that you can safely remove your source directory. Your program is now completely uninstalled.

The best way of handling installation of binaries you built your own is "stow".
It's a tool that creates all symlinks when you install software. If you want to remove the installed software you can do it without "make uninstall" and everything - you just have to "unstow" this software.
stow can be downloaded at sourceforge.net. Help is available then after unpacking the source files. And of course after installing stow you have a manual. Try it. It's really nice!