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I want to Uninstall everything from my system except the OS itself. In fact I want to factory reset my system.

Current version I am using is 18.4

Hannan Naseem
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    What command can help me to do this. – Hannan Naseem Oct 23 '18 at 04:15
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    I think the easiest way to uninstall everything from my system except the OS itself is to make a fresh installation (now and in this case from a live drive (USB pendrive or DVD disk) with Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS). Simply overwrite the current operatiing system with the fresh installation. But notice that your personal files and tweaks will also disappear, so backup everything (that you want to keep) to another drive before you start installing. – sudodus Oct 23 '18 at 07:24
  • The 'System Restore' option in Windows, which seems to be what you are reaching for, essentially reinstalls your system while quietly preserving your Product Key. Ubuntu does not have Product Key to preserve, and you control the ability to reinstall already. – user535733 Oct 23 '18 at 11:57

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The quick and easy way to have a factory reset is to reinstall the OS all together. It will take you 20 minutes if your computer is not too fast.

Resetting in another way, i.e. without replacing the OS, involves manual work, and might not be exactly possible at all.

  • You might delete your account and recreate it to get a "pristine" account
  • The only way to remove packages you installed yourself is to remember which these were, and remove/purge them. Even then, the system technically may not be byte-identical to a freshly installed system.

Actually, my recommendation to reinstall freshly very much coincides with the answer given here, where the question was to remove personal information. All other approaches may be cumbersome or uncertain.

vanadium
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