Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1236538
Accepted
Kaigo
Asked: 2020-05-08 02:54:21 +0800 CST

sudo apt autoremove wants to remove a lot of packages, safe to run? [duplicate]

  • 772

Following on from a reinstall of ubuntu desktop sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop to fix a previous issue with not booting.

and then a reinstall of google chrome

sudo apt remove google-chrome-stable

I got the following output:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'google-chrome-stable' is not installed, so not removed
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  gconf-service gconf-service-backend gconf2 gconf2-common gnome-panel-data gnome-shell-pomodoro-data gparted-common intltool
  libaacs0 libaom0 libaribb24-0 libass9 libavutil56 libbdplus0 libbluray2 libbs2b0 libcodec2-0.9 libegl1-mesa libflite1
  libgconf-2-4 libgme0 libgsm1 liblilv-0-0 libmusicbrainz5-2 libmusicbrainz5cc2v5 libmysofa1 libnorm1 libnuma1 libopenmpt0
  libpaps0 libpgm-5.2-0 libpostproc55 libpython2-stdlib libpython2.7-minimal libpython2.7-stdlib librubberband2 libserd-0-0
  libshine3 libsnappy1v5 libsord-0-0 libsratom-0-0 libssh-gcrypt-4 libswresample3 libswscale5 libvdpau1 libvidstab1.1
  libvo-amrwbenc0 libwxbase3.0-0v5 libx265-179 libxcb-xtest0 libxnvctrl0 libxvidcore4 libzmq5 libzvbi-common libzvbi0
  mesa-vdpau-drivers paps python-gobject-2 python2 python2-minimal python2.7 python2.7-minimal python3-distutils-extra
  python3-levenshtein python3-pyinotify python3-websocket vdpau-driver-all
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 5 not to upgrade.

And running sudo apt autoremove gives a warning about removing these packages

The following packages will be REMOVED ...

And the list of packages again. My question is is this safe to run, are these packages neccessary

package-management dpkg apt

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Before running sudo apt-get autoremove run sudo apt-get -y update --fix-missing and upgrade using "Software & Updates" or sudo apt-get -y upgrade

    Recently I installed some new softwares and removed some software which I found unnecessary. After that when ever I ran sudo apt-get command in terminal it shows me a hug list of dependencies/ software marked as no more required. When I ran sudo apt-get -y upgrade the list reduced to a small list.

    • 1

  2. Documentation of autoremove says

    autoremove is used to remove packages that were automatically installed to satisfy dependencies for other packages and are now no longer needed

    Therefore, no issue in running autoremove at all. I have done it so many times in past and never get into trouble.

    • 1

  3. If autoremove proposes to remove them, then it's safe to run, they are not needed by any other packages.

    However, you could just copy-paste the list just in case something goes wrong. Like that, you can re-install them again.

    • 0