[Techtalk] Uninstalling programs in Linux

[Akkana]

Marian Routh writes:
> Thanks, Rebecca.  I'm not talking about the rpm - I know you can get rid 
> of that or save it for another installation.  I'm talking about the 
> actual program that is on the hard disk, taking up 234 MB of precious 

If you have already removed the rpm (with rpm -e) and what you want
now is to remove the "officenn" in your home directory: you should be
able to just remove that with "rm -rf ~/officenn" (or using your
favorite file manager tool) and reclaim your disk space.

This unfriendly habit of dumping 230Mb in the home directory of every
user of the program is the main reason I try to find alternatives to
Star/Open Office.  It's a powerful program and does a lot of useful
stuff, but why can't they just install to a common system directory
like every other program does?  And why can't they install their program
during rpm -i instead of waiting until a user tries to run the program?

Malcolm Tredinnick writes:
> It only installs part of itself in your home directory, unless you
> specifically request the full install when you first run it (from memory

The default is to install everything in your home directory (though
it's not made clear beforehand that that's what it's going to do).
Apparently the secret is to tell it you want a "networked installation"
if you want it to put the binary in a shared location.  The text in the
installer implies that this is intended for a network of systems sharing
via NFS, but with luck maybe it also works for multiple users on a
single workstation (or for a single user who doesn't want 232Mb of
system software in her homedir).

	...Akkana