What are the packages that comes default with Linux Mint Cinnamon that I can remove without any problems.
Linux Mint comes with lots of packages installed by default to give full experience to new users. But not everyone needs everything. In my case for example, I don’t need celluloid, pix, hexchat, hypnotix, rhythmbox, LibreOffice, etc,… Those applications has their own audience and Linux Mint including them is a good thing but I personally don’t want them.
Mini Rant or QA maybe?
I searched the internet a bit for the answer, on various forums, and subreddits. And All the people who asked this question got obliterated as far as I’ve seen. The common answers are:
if you remove the applications that came installed with Mint by default, it will cause Dependency issues.
If I remove an application and the dependencies shold be removed UNLESS some other application need those dependency, right? If that’s the case, why removing packages can cause dependency issues?
Why would you want to remove essential applications like LibreOffice, pix etc. ? (this question is asked in the sense of “what sane person would want to remove those?”)
Cause why not? Maybe I like GwenView more than Pix, maybe I don’t need office applications at all. Why this even matter?
If you want don’t want Mint’s default applications, then what’s the point of using Mint? Just use something like Ubuntu server or something. People need to realize that lot of people (at least me) using Mint for it’s System management (updates, apt source list, etc…) via GUI ability. Just because I want to manage my system with ease, that doesn’t mean I need everyt applications it offers me.
I honestly feel bad for the person who asked the question in the first place. They didn’t got the answers till the very end. All they got is Criticism and it’s not constructive one.
Why this kind of behaviour even exist?
P.S.: I’m using Mint inside VM for testing purposes. I don’t want my VM to take a lot of space. That’s why I don’t need lot of applications.
Yeah, that’s just shit behavior. You often see this from sophomores - people who were themselves newbs a short while ago and now thing they’re experts. It’s just people, man.
I don’t know why anyone couldn’t remove whatever they wanted, as long as they looked carefully at the list of other things that are going to be removed and didn’t notice anything they recognize and want to keep. There are no distributions I know of that will let you remove dependencies without telling you what they’re needed for. There are several distributions where you tell the package manager to remove something, and everything that depends on it, and not ask you to confirm anything. But, then, all Linuxes will let you
sudo rm -rf /, too.Nobody should have to get any answer to this question other than: “remove whatever you want; just pay attention to what the package manager is telling you.”
Additionally, some specific packages cannot be removed without telling apt you really mean it. I think the flag was called
--break-systemif I remember correctly.Thank You.
I guess I’ll just backup and go at it blindly.
Not blindly.
Use your package manager to remove whatever you don’t want. Your manager will either say, “can’t do it, it’s needed by X,” or will say “removing this will ALSO remove X”. If you want to keep X, then hit cancel. If you don’t recognize or care about X, go ahead.
Package managers manage dependencies. This means it’s hard to remove stuff that are needed by programs you care about - as long as you read what the manager is telling you. If you remove something and blindly hit accept without at least scanning what else will be removed, yeah. You can accidentally delete stuff you don’t want to.
On linux, there’s often little consequence. Even if you do accidentally remove Firefox, then just re-install it. You won’t lose any personal data.
And most distributions simply won’t let you remove packages such that you can’t boot the system, or log in.
You want to keep your session manager, window manager, your kernel. Whatever you’re using might let you remove the session manager, or DE; I doubt it’ll let you remove your kernel, or systemd, or any of those core systems – at least, not without a bunch of warnings.
My final comment: if you try to remove something and the package manager says that it’ll need to remove a whole bunch of other things to do that… you might think twice. That’s a package a lot of other things need.
Thnak You.
I haven’t used Mint in ages so I can’t really help with specifics, but generally if you know what it is and you don’t use it, it’s fine to remove. If you don’t know what a specific package is, look it up before removal. Read the output closely before you actually remove anything.
Also, if you’re using a VM you probably can take a snapshot of the state prior to making any changes. If things work well, no worries. If it didn’t boot, just roll back.
People will suggest Arch (what I use FWIW), but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you want to learn.
Thank You.
I’m learning Arch btw (Hyprland) right now. It’s bit of a learning curve, because I’m new to Arch, Hyprland, Window Manager, Wayland, that too in a VM.
Hyprland or Wayland itself have certain problems in VM.
But, In the end, I just wanted to know what using Arch , Hyprland is like.
What I did when I first set up Mint is go through the applications in the main menu and uninstalled anything I didn’t want. Anything you can’t just right click and select uninstall you should be able to remove by opening up Synaptic.
I’m not sure how much space you’d really be able to reclaim since many of these packages are negligible in size, anyway. But you’re probably fine as long as you leave the system tools alone.
Thanks man.
In theory, you should be able to remove any high-level applications you don’t want, and you should be fine. In practice, it might not be so clean and easy.
The reason there are so many distros out there is because lots of people have different needs and wants. Mint is designed to be an easy-to-use OS out of the box, so it contains lots of default applications. The target audience of Mint are people who want this behavior.
If you want a more minimal or custom install, consider using a distro that is geared toward that (e.g., Arch, Alpine, Debian w/o desktop). If you need to run Mint specifically for testing, then it depends on what kind of testing you’re doing–if it’s for an end-user test case, you’ll probably want to leave all the default stuff on there as that’s a better representation of the target system. Otherwise you’re fine to uninstall anything you don’t want, but it’s possible that the dependency tree isn’t perfect and you might need to troubleshoot a little.
Thank You.
I want Mint’s way of updating packages, installing kernels, Adding ppa, changing apt server, etc.
It’s so easy to manage the system. But I just don’t want the extra packages like hypnotix and etc… Although, I can see why all those things were there, It’s just me.
Mint is based on Ubuntu, so you could try Ubuntu itself without the Mint stuff bolted on.
Ubuntu asks you what you want pre-installed when you’re setting it up.
And since Ubuntu has all the same flavours that mint does (and more), it’ll look like what you expect it to. Modern Mint uses Cinnamon whereas old Mint uses Mate, so just choose the one you’re already familiar with.
So, the whole “Ubuntu bad” is not true?
Ubuntu is great.
The company that supports it (Canonical) usually makes an annoying decision that goes against the community’s preferences every 3 years or so, but they always eventually rescind it.
The last decade of annoying decisions is changing which desktop environment is considered “default”, and a bunch of developers time wasted on an ubuntu for phones which never released.
Their current “annoying decision” is pushing Snaps which are just a way to package apps. They’re okayish, but they run apps slower than the other standards (Flatpak, Appimage, or just installing through a package manager) and Canonical is in charge of the place where Snaps are downloaded.
Most people just download Ubuntu, uninstall Snaps then install what they want.
So yeah, ubuntu is great, the company that supports them usually puts one annoying thing in at a time every few years that the community turns off and ignores.
Thank you.
So how do you define “packages that can be removed without any problems”? How do you know for a fact that, in a week, you won’t need some piece of software that you removed? If you gave us more information about your intentions and use cases for a “minimal Mint” environment, that would be helpful.
EDIT: also, if you’re just running this in a VM for “testing”, why not just remove shit until you identify an issue? This type of problem is usually addressed in the opposite direction, by adding things until you get the desired result, not removing things until you break something.
The obvious answer is packages that aren’t essential for basic functions of the OS/desktop environment.
Define basic functions
You seem to be implying that applications could be considered basic functions. I can understand that perspective, but an application such as a music player or browser is certainly not a basic function of the OS, and I think it’s a stretch to call those a basic function of the desktop environment. Maybe a better word is ‘essential’. User applications are not essential to the OS, and the only applications I consider essential to the desktop environment are a terminal and a file browser, though the last one is negotiable. Of course things like the system setting app (or whatever GNOME calls it) are essential, but that’s a component of the desktop environment and not a user application. So my list is:
- The kernel
- The init system
- Essential system components and services such as dbus and pipewire without which the OS and/or desktop environment will be degraded or not function.
- A terminal emulator app
- A file manager app
Oh look! Tangible requirements! It’s almost like someone could build something based on this list of required items.
What a concept.
IMO that list is the obvious answer to “which packages can’t be removed without breaking the system”. Sufficiently obvious that I consider your insistence on specific “requirements” to be obnoxious. Though for that specific phrasing I would not include the terminal emulator or file browser. Using a system without them would be annoying but entirely doable.
Don’t waste your life fighting Mint’s decisions hoping nothing broke rather than making your own on Arch, minimalist by design.
I’m learning Arch btw (Hyprland) right now. It’s bit of a learning curve, because I’m new to Arch, Hyprland, Window Manager, Wayland, that too in a VM.
Hyprland or Wayland itself have certain problems in VM.
