I did a clean minimal install of Ubuntu 18.04.1, got all my programs and data installed and did a reboot. It only came up with the non-graphical login prompt. After trying to fix this a piece at a time I gave in and installed ubuntu-desktop. That fixed everything, but it also install all the "extra stuff" that isn't part of the minimal install.
I know how to delete the obvious additional programs that are listed as installed, but not how to uninstall anything that may not be visibly obvious. Is there a way to get rid of that extra stuff and just be left with what I would have had with the minimal install?
Below is the list of package names included in the full install but not in the minimal install. This is how I generated the list.
I did a full install on a vm and ran
Then I installed a minimum install on a VM, ran the command again out to a second file, compared the files and found the ones that are not in the minimum install.
Using this information, you can diff it against your own installed list and decide what packages you want to uninstall using
or apt-get purge package_name
Here is the list of package names included in the full install but not in the minimal install.