how to uninstall softwares in Debian?

[Harnuud Chinbat]

Hi, I have had many painfull experiences of installing several programs unsuccessfully( uncompletely) due to the absence of what whats.So it's meaningless to maintain them in my system.I should eradicate them now.

Tell me How to uninstall softwares in Debian ?

[techieMoe]

apt-get remove packagename

That only works if you installed them with apt in the first place, though. If you tried compiling from source, you can go back into the source directory for each program and type:

make uninstall

[retired1af]

And if that doesn't work?

[kyku]

Generally when managing packages in Debian I'd recommend using aptitude instead of apt-get. The big advantage of it when it comes to deinstalling is that aptitude will not only remove packages you select but also those dependant packages that are no longer necessary. If you don't like the ncurses interface you can use it from command line, much like apt-get, e.g. aptitude install pkg-name, or aptitude remove pkg-name, or aptitude purge pkg-name (which also removes configurations files of the package).