I recently (a day ago) switched from Linux Mint to Debian and tried out several different DEs. I settled on Cinnamon but still have leftover packages and files from Gnome, Plasma, etc. Is there an easy way to remove everything that was installed automatically by a particular DE besides reinstalling Debian with just Cinnamon? Or do i have to go through all my programs manually?

I’ve already removed the DEs i don’t like with tasksel, and i’ve tried apt autoremove but it doesn’t remove anything.

If i do have to do this manually, is there a list somewhere of the programs that come with each DE so i know which of the four plain text editors and so on to keep?

After trying a few of these alternative programs, i’ve decided i will go through them manually since i like some that aren’t from Cinnamon. Solutions are still welcome in case someone else has this same issue.

  • monovergent@lemmy.ml
    2·
    5 days ago

    The desktop environment packages that tasksel uses (task-gnome-desktop, task-kde-desktop, etc) can be found towards the bottom of the list at: https://packages.debian.org/trixie/task-desktop. In theory, you can just uninstall the task-your-desktop package which takes away everything that DE came with. If that doesn’t work or doesn’t play well your earlier manual uninstallations, take note of the dependencies that the task packages pulled (including recommendations) and go about uninstalling the dependencies layer by layer.