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Accepted
João Pimentel Ferreira
Asked: 2020-12-26 12:31:37 +0800 CST

How to remove Ubuntu and keep Lubuntu?

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Ubuntu is great and thus I installed it in my father's computer. But the computer is quite old and Ubuntu was becoming slower after every upgrade (now it's on version 18.04 LTS). Thus I installed Lubuntu on top of it. Now he just uses Lubuntu and he's quite happy about it.

How can Ubuntu be removed from a computer which has both Ubuntu and Lubuntu? They are both in the same partition.

lubuntu

2 Answers

  1. You can try this

    Start in text-only mode

    Switch on your computer. Wait until the BIOS has finished loading, and press and hold Shift, which will bring up the Grub menu.
Select the line which starts with Advanced options.
Select the line ending with (recovery mode)
Press Return and your machine will begin the boot process.
After a few moments, your PC should display a menu with a number of options, including Drop to root shell prompt. Press Return with this option highlighted.
The PC will start in a terminal.

    Run these commands:

    Mount partitions in read-write mode

    mount -o remount,rw /
mount --all

    Update repositories

    apt-get update

    Install aptitude and deborphan

    apt-get install --reinstall aptitude deborphan

    Eliminate the components of gnome that are not necessary in lubuntu

    aptitude remove '?and(?reverse-depends(gnome),?not(?reverse-depends(?exact-name(lubuntu-desktop))))'

    Reinstall lubuntu-desktop

    apt-get install --reinstall lubuntu-desktop

    Eliminate orphan packages

    deborphan
apt-get --purge remove $(deborphan)
deborphan --libdevel
apt-get --purge remove $(deborphan --libdevel)
deborphan --find-config
dpkg --purge $(deborphan --find-config)

    Remove unnecessary packages

    apt-get autoremove

    Remove downloaded packages

    apt-get clean

    Restart system

    reboot
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  2. Best Answer

    As I alluded to on Ask Ubuntu, I would expect a simple

    sudo apt remove ubuntu-desktop

    To do what you want. I haven't done that recently on a 18.04 Ubuntu base install with another desktop added, so without testing I can't be sure if any problems are to be expected. I wouldn't expect any (results may differ depending on changes you've made however).

    As I also stated on Ask Ubuntu I'd type the command and scan the output of packages to be removed looking for any potential problems (not expecting any, but better safe than sorry), then proceed. If I noted any, I'd fix them by a sudo apt install either before the ubuntu-desktop removal (which will cause package(s) to be marked as manually installed; thus they'll remain), OR after it (same end effect, after the remove it may require the package to be re-downloaded being the difference; tiny bandwidth hit)

    For years all my installs were Ubuntu desktop, with my wanted desktop added later as my ISP allowed bandwidth quota free download of Ubuntu ISOs only, updated packages were also quota free so adding lubuntu-desktop (etc) afterwards used none of my monthly bandwidth quota. They no longer offer this so I no longer do it this way.

    If you're worried about the effect, I'd install Ubuntu Desktop on a VM, apt install lubuntu-desktop, reboot the VM, then do the sudo apt remove lubuntu-desktop, restart the VM and look for ill effects; I wouldn't expect any, but currently I'm unwilling to do that test.

    this answer was written first on discourse.ubuntu.com, thus the references to this site in my wording

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