Slimming down MX

[Adrian]

@ Adrian - it takes much less time to update/upgrade if you don't have all those extra Mb's of things for apt-get to work on. If you don't need it, why keep it - that's my motto! As a retired old man, I have plenty of time to waste removing apps and programs I don't need -

That's OK, I understand that, usually though this kind of question comes from people used with Windows "more programs slow down the system" that really doesn't apply in Linux -- as long as the program is on HDD and not running is not a problem and the updates in Debian Stable are not that often, but yeah, just remove the programs you don't need, just be careful of the "perfect is the enemy of good" pitfall, you might end up spending time and removing stuff that you need for little benefit.

[richb]

I keep applications I do not need as I have plenty of drive space, but one should have their system the way they want it.

If removing programs via Synaptic or terminal, before executing the command it will tell you what else is being removed. So you can peruse that and cancel if there is something that you do not recognize or decide you need.

[antiX-Dave]

I would guess that any program named in the menu is "safe" to remove unless it falls under the system categories. In which case removing something from there is more likely to cause problems. For locales, reconfigure the locales package as d.o. States. You could also add localepurge if I remember correctly. There are a bunch of trimming tips and tricks on the antiX forum / in the archive.

[richb]

I would guess that any program named in the menu is "safe" to remove unless it falls under the system categories. In which case removing something from there is more likely to cause problems. .......etc.

That is true unless it also removes dependencies that other applications use that he wants to keep.

[Bierhundt]

So I found this on the internet, is this safe way to remove all of the useless locales? and would I want to put all of the ones I want to keep inside the arrows? The MX manual doesn't seem to be clear/helpful about removing locales, from what I've found .... of course, I may have missed something.

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sudo locale-gen --purge <locales YOU WANT TO KEEP>

i.e. LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

I'd also like to know if it's possible to remove everything from Libre Office without removing Writer? TIA

[dolphin_oracle]

personally I think

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dpkg-reconfigure locales

should be easier to deal with,as there are a lot of locales in antiX/mx preconfigured.

as to removing stuff from libreoffice...yes you can remove a lot of bits of libreoffice. the individual apps are listed with separate package names. Some common stuff will remain of course since writer will still be installed.

[Bierhundt]

I would guess that any program named in the menu is "safe" to remove unless it falls under the system categories. In which case removing something from there is more likely to cause problems. For locales, reconfigure the locales package as d.o. States. You could also add localepurge if I remember correctly. There are a bunch of trimming tips and tricks on the antiX forum / in the archive.

THX, I'll look in those tips and see if I can find something helpful!

[Bierhundt]

personally I think

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dpkg-reconfigure locales

should be easier to deal with,as there are a lot of locales in antiX/mx preconfigured.

as to removing stuff from libreoffice...yes you can remove a lot of bits of libreoffice. the individual apps are listed with separate package names. Some common stuff will remain of course since writer will still be installed.

THX dolphin_oracle, I tried

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$ sudo apt-get install localepurge

but it wouldn't allow me to deselect some locales that I didn't want, so I backed out of it. I'll try your suggestion now.

[Adrian]

dpkg-reconfigure locales or edit /etc/locale.gen we should probably comment out all the ones we don't need at install time.

[Bierhundt]

@ dolphin_oracle - this is what i got when I put in that command - I don't understand what it means;

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debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable

Do I need to shut down and start over?