How to uninstall Latex?

Question

Ubuntu and Latex newbie here. Very basic question I have.

I recently installed Latex using the following code:

sudo apt-get install texlive

However, I want to uninstall this and just get the latex base for now.

I tried the following but it doesn't work:

sudo apt-get remove texlive

dpkg --get-selections | grep tex shows that a number of latex related files are installed.

How do I remove texlive?

Solution 1

Many other dependencies also got in when you ran sudo apt-get install texlive. When you ran the apt-get remove command, then only the texlive package was uninstalled, not its dependencies.

You can easily remove these extra unneeded dependencies by running:

sudo apt-get autoremove

Solution 2

sudo apt-get remove tex-common resolved the problem for me.

Solution 3

sudo apt-get remove texlive
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get remove tex-common

Then download and install directly from TUG. You can choose your operating system there. This has a bunch of packages and is much more complete than other distributions. Much better than sudo apt-get install latex.

Solution 4

This removes all latex packages:

sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove texlive*

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Comments

[ATMathew]

+1 Thanks for the explanation. I often forget that there's remove and autoremove are distinct commands.