uninstalling iceweasel with apt-get autoremove

Question

When I try to uninstall iceweasel it wants to uninstall dependencies like 'gnome' and 'gnome-core', which of course I don't want. I tried to follow several instructions in apt-get - autoremove wants to uninstall Gnome ... but to no avail.

A clue would maybe be that something messed up when I installed kde to give it a try ( now I am back on gnome2 ).

If someone has already been in my case ...

Solution 1

In my Debian install, gnome-core has a required dependency on iceweasel. If you attempt to uninstall iceweasel, you by definition break the gnome-core installation, which means it needs to be uninstalled as well. And gnome has a required dependency on gnome-core; rinse, repeat. So, you're kinda stuck.

This state of affairs is arguably a GNOME packaging bug, and gnome-core should more properly be depending on the virtual package gnome-www-browser or www-browser.

Solution 2

You need only to mark the package it wants to remove as manual installed. Lets say:

sudo apt-get autoremove iceweasel
The following packages will be removed:
  iceweasel gnome

If there's a package you don't want to remove you only do:

sudo apt-get install gnome
gnome is already installed
marked as installed manually

Then when you remove iceweasel, it doesn't try to remove gnome. Done.

Solution 3

The gnome and gnome-core packages are meta-packages. They don't contain any files, just dependencies on other packages. So technically you don't need them and you won't be adversely affected. If you uninstall iceweasel, gnome and gnome-core, the only thing you'll be missing is iceweasel.

What you will miss, is if in the next version of Debian gnome or gnome-core depend on new additional packages they won't be automatically installed by the dependency graph.

Comments

[Smiley]

How about using apt-get purge iceweasel? It would remove Iceweasel, as well as, its configuration files.

[PerrierCitror]

no it does not change anything Barun, it does not change anything ...