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I do not want any games. I do not want any AV-related stuff (no music, no videos, no photos, ... no entertainment at all). I do not want the LibreOffice package(s). I am thinking about just installing the server edition, but it is a dual boot machine and wubi was a very convenient way to get it going.

Dean
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  • Sorry if I don't get you, but could you be more specific? You want to delete existing music, vids, games, etc.? And/Or you don't want to be able to transfer/install music, vids, games, etc.? Would help us understand what you're asking a li'l better. – Nitin Venkatesh Nov 06 '12 at 18:39
  • I would like a "minimal" installation of 12.04. No games, no audio features, no video features, ... basically not much more than a gui and terminal access. (I could even live nicely without the gui but sometimes it comes in handy.) – Dean Nov 06 '12 at 18:52
  • I have been going through using apt-cache pkgnames, locating "suspects" and running apt-get purge libreoffice* (for example). But is there a way to remove a whole class of apps? – Dean Nov 06 '12 at 18:54
  • About the games thing, did you take a look at How can I remove all default installed games? – Nitin Venkatesh Nov 06 '12 at 18:55
  • That helps ... but is there a way to find the names of the game packages (for example)? Re. the video stuff, I thought about doing apt-get purge video but am concerned that it might be a bit heavy handed. I don't want to render the installation totally unusable! – Dean Nov 06 '12 at 18:59
  • How about apropos? Running apropos game would show you all package names which have the word "game" in their description, and you can get creative and try finding clubbed stuff like that.. Just a thought.. – Nitin Venkatesh Nov 06 '12 at 19:01
  • switch to archlinux – sarvesh.lad Nov 06 '12 at 19:38

2 Answers2

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I have a very similar attitude to yours and have two ways for solving your problems, both used by me with success:

  1. Remove unnecessary packages, leaving only those that you deem necessary. Read this thread. It's quite long, a bit complicated and I remember experiencing problems (which taught me a lot and were well worth the trouble

  2. Get Ubuntu MinimalCD and install your system from scratch (not as scratch as linuxfromscratch) and build up from there. I did it several times, it's not at all difficult and taught me a lot about dependencies between packages. I'm not sure whether you can marry that approach with wubi, though (didn't check, have no idea).

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It is not very hard or difficult to do from within Ubuntu Software Center. There is an 'installed' option inside USC and all you need to do is this for anything you need removed.

enter image description here

The games section should have just 4 or 5 options. Office is there too and has only 5 options. Same also for the audio and video option. This also removes the need to know what packages they are but for future usage you can see the package name when you click 'more info'.

So all in all the manual work to do this is not that difficult if you want to keep gnome/unity that is. Besides that: this is almost fool proof; using apt-get remove you can use wildcards yes, but those can remove more than what you would expect.

Rinzwind
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