On your systems some of applications installed but which are not useful to you and want to uninstall it. In this case, you’ll possibly want to uninstall the package. This article explains how to uninstall software packages using the graphical interface as well as through command-line interface on your ubuntu system.
Ensure that user should root or user with sudo privileges can uninstall packages from Ubuntu.
Uninstall Packages using the Ubuntu Software Center
Ubuntu Software Center (USC) is graphical software inbuilt with Ubuntu. Using this you can uninstall if you don’t have knowledge of command-line. This utility provides a graphical interface to find, install, and uninstall apps.
Follow the below steps to uninstall through Ubuntu Software Center:
- Click on Activities and search for “Ubuntu Software” and click on USC icon and it will open USC software.
- There are three tabs at top you have to choose installed software to get list of all installed applications.
- Use scroll to find your application and click on “Remove” button next to it.
Some of applications will not show in the Ubuntu Software Center because they don’t have graphical user interface. So those software you have to uninstall using command-line.
Uninstall Packages using the Command Line
Whatever possible to do using Ubuntu Software Tool is also can do using command-line. In fact, the command line gives you more options and control for uninstalling the software packages.
Open terminal by clicking on terminal icon or you can use shortcut key Ctr+Alt+T from keyboard.
First of all, you should get list of all installed packages and find exact name which you want to uninstall. Run below command to get installed packages list.
sudo apt list --installed
It would be a good idea to pipe the output to less because there will be a long list of installed packages. Or you can use grep command to filter the result and make it easier to read.
On Ubuntu, Debian, and related Linux distributions you can install, update, uninstall and otherwise managing software packages using the apt and apt-get command-line utilities.
Run the below command to remove an installed package:
sudo apt remove package_name
Here, you should replace package_name to the name of the package you want to remove.
sudo apt-get remove package_name
You also can uninstall multiple packages separating by space.
sudo apt remove package1 package2
After uninstalling package using remove some of package files may remain. If you would like to remove completely then you should use purge instead of remove:
sudo apt purge package_name
Uninstall Snap Packages
If any application which you want to remove which is not listed when you run sudo apt list --installed then possibly it was installed as a snap package.
You can get list of all installed snap packages by typing:
snap list
Run the below command to uninstall snap package:
sudo snap remove package_name
Uninstall Unused Packages
At the time of installation of any package some of dependencies are installed too. So when you uninstall some packages, the dependencies packages are remain on systems. These leftover packages are no longer used by anything else and can be removed.
You can remove the unused packages using:
sudo apt autoremove
Conclusion
You have successfully learnt how to remove applications from your Ubuntu through the command line and using the Ubuntu Software Center.
Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.
If our content helps you, please consider buying us a coffee
Thank you for your support.
Leave a Reply