Ubuntu 16.04 doesn't let me to uninstall applications

Question

I like to have only what I need on my computer and hence I always follow the practice of removing the programs I know I'm not going to use.

I just downloaded Ubuntu 16.04 LTS but I'm unable to uninstall applications. I go to the Software Center and hit remove for the apps I want to (Mozilla, Mahjong, Solitaire, etc). Everything seems to work. However, after twenty seconds the Software Center refreshes itself and the apps are back!! Please, help! It's really annoying.

Is there any way to remove these apps from the Terminal?

Solution 1

I ran into a similar problem. I would click the "Remove" button in the software center, but the applications would re-appear after a short period. I did this for the Aisle Riot Solitaire program, for example, and it kept coming back. When I went to remove it with the command line, however, it said it was not installed:

$ sudo apt-get purge aisleriot
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'aisleriot' is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 87 not upgraded.

After more investigation (read: blind clicking), I discovered that clicking the refresh icon on the Updates tab actually seemed to refresh the Installed tab as well (even though the refresh icon is not available on the Installed tab). After this, Solitaire stopped showing up.

By "refresh icon", I mean the circular arrow in the upper left corner.

Solution 2

If you are comfortable with the command line, the way to remove a software is:

sudo apt-get remove software_name

or

sudo apt-get purge software_name

The latter removes configuration files as well. Since you no longer seem to be interested in the software, you should probably use purge.

You will, however, need to find the name for each of the packages you are trying to uninstall/remove from your system. The ones you mentioned in your post would be firefox (assuming that is what you meant with Mozilla), gnome-mahjongg, aisleriot. Therefore, to remove those three you would do this:

sudo apt-get purge firefox gnome-mahjongg aisleriot

To find the name of the package is sometimes tricky (for instance it took me some time to find the name for aisleriot). You can install synaptic and that will help you find the name more easily. Mind you though, you may need to uninstall synaptic afterwards as you seem to be concerned about software you will not be using.

You may find this post useful as well: install/remove list of packages from command line with apt-get as it shows how you can remove software that is in a list.

Also, this very recent post talks about removing the gemes: How can I remove all default installed games?

Note: I would not recommend to remove firefox to have a backup browser in case Chromium or whatever other browser does not work.

Comments

[VihanAgarwal]

It is installed alongside windows 10, in it's own partition on my only HDD

[Juan Antonio]

If you have found a solution to your problem in any of the answers, do not forget to select it so this thread closes.

[VihanAgarwal]

This is great! Thanks for the help. Is there something wrong with the software centre? Is this a bug? If so, how can I report it to Canonical?

[user68186]

@VihanAgarwal See askubuntu.com/questions/5121/how-do-i-report-a-bug

[kbrose]

@DavidForester thanks for edit - I didn't have enough rep to inline the image.