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Pidgin used to be good but can't find any use for it anymore. When I try to uninstall, Synaptic tells me it will remove the Mate Desktop Environment too. Is there a way to only uninstall Pidgin without "throwing half the system overboard"?

Desktop: MATE 1.8.2 Distro: Ubuntu 14.04 trusty

Liam Gutierrez
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  • please refer here – Ravan Aug 26 '15 at 01:28
  • Why exactly does sudo apt-get autoremove --purge pidgin not work? – dobey Aug 26 '15 at 01:36
  • "Pidgin used to be good " Still is? What is exactly your issue? If you just don't want to use it...you could simple leave it alone. – xangua Aug 26 '15 at 01:50
  • @xangua you're right, I leave Pidgin alone and simply remove it from startup and hide it from the apps menu. I don't want to wreck the system because of a few MBs. And I say Pidgin used to be good because I can't bring it to work with Facebook and Twitter anymore. Thanks – Liam Gutierrez Aug 27 '15 at 06:58
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    For Twitter probably because whatever third party plugin you are using, it's probably dead as many other Twitter clients have died due to the new limitations Twitter itself promotes for third party apps. For Facebook the api Facebook itself offered was removed, there is a new plugin however that will be part of Pidgin 3 and it is already backported to Pidgin 2. As you can see in both cases, either official or unofficial plugins, were the services that you mention and not Pidgin itself that simply "stopped working". So Pidgin hasn't stopped to be any less good, not to me. – xangua Aug 27 '15 at 07:15

1 Answers1

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Uninstall just pidgin:

sudo apt remove pidgin

This will remove just the pidgin package itself.

Uninstall pidgin and its dependencies:

sudo apt remove --auto-remove pidgin

This will remove the pidgin package and any other dependent packages which are no longer needed.

Purging your config/data too:

sudo apt purge --auto-remove pidgin

Caution! Purged config/data can not be restored by reinstalling the package.

BeastOfCaerbannog
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Ravan
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    Thank you @Ravan but I still see that "The following packages will be REMOVED: pidgin pidgin-extprefs pidgin-libnotify pidgin-themes pidgin-twitter ubuntu-mate-desktop"

    Ubuntu Mate Desktop is still in the list when I enter your suggested command.

    I better give up. It looks like Pidgin is heavily nested into the Mate Desktop Environment. I'm a regular user and don't want to mess with dependencies. I will simply hide the Pidgin menu entry from the menu. Nonetheless, thank you for suggestion.

     – Liam Gutierrez Aug 27 '15 at 07:06
  • @LiamGutierrez Related: http://askubuntu.com/questions/681232/mate-desktop-environment-wont-uninstall-from-ubuntu – Elder Geek Dec 14 '16 at 14:34
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    @LiamGutierrez ubuntu-mate-desktop is just a metapackage that installs other Mate-related packages. After the installation of these packages, it can be safely removed. It does not uninstall the Ubuntu Mate desktop environment. – BeastOfCaerbannog Sep 02 '19 at 13:11