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When you uninstall a program on Ubuntu, does the software leave any residue?

rated 0 times [ 28] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 2941 / 2 Years ago, thu, october 13, 2022, 10:41:36

Computer systems like Windows have tons of software residue that is left when an application is installed and subsequently uninstalled.

Does Ubuntu have the same problem? Would my 5 year old Ubuntu install run the same as the day of install (not counting some of the system upgrades) if I uninstalled all the software I had installed on it over the years?

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tonhorn

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2 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago hirtieve · Accepted Answer

Ubuntu/Linux is set up in a differrent way.

Yes, traces are left behind -but- they do not impact the speed of your system.

On Linux libraries sometimes remain on your system. We call them orphans and there is a program called deborphan that removes them. But all you gain is a bit of space on your harddisk. Speed you will not gain. You get more speed by tweaking settings or by disabling services you do not use.

If you want a toolset that includes deborphan install Ubuntu Tweak.

Sometimes programs leave things there on purpose. Those tend to be settings files we manually edited. If you uninstall you have an option "--purge" that removes those while uninstalling; otherwise you are suppose to delete them your self. But again: these just take up space (and for that matter we are talking kilobytes not megabytes) and do not impact on your speed.

2 things related to speed: keep your / partition under 95% full and make sure your system does not need to swap alot. Those 2 are probably 2 main speed related issues.