Uninstall question

[J-Tek]

Yo,

I was wondering how to really in general uninstall applications on linux.

If you delete the directory where the application resides and the .pref_folder from you directory in /home/my_profile will that get rid of it? Or is it like windows where there are also entries in some 'registry'? I know if it was installed w/ RPM I can just delete the same way.

thanx, :rolleyes:

[fateswarm]

yep, if it was installed by rpm you just "rpm -e what_you_want_to_remove".

If you compiled it and 'made install', you have to keep that directory safe and do 'make clean' or similar in order to remove it totally.

Everything depends on the app. Some (premature) won't even incule the 'make clean' option.
There is no clear way to find out where every app writes. Just do 'rpm -e app' or 'make clean' if possible.

[Choozo]

Doing a 'make clean' in the source directory will only remove files created by 'make' in the source structure. It will not uninstall programs installed with 'make install'.
You will have to do a 'make uninstall' (if the uninstall option exist in the Makefile) from the same place you did 'make install' to remove a program that you compiled and installed that way.

This means that you have to keep the source tree after installing the application. You could of course tar and gzip the directories to save space.

Cheers :)