Uninstalling apps that aren't there?

Hardware Librem 5
1

I’m peppering with questions so sorry for hogging the show.

I have just gone to get rid of some apps that I don’t need or ones that didn’t launch such as ‘Parental Control’ and ‘Weather’ but when I go to uninstall via getting the ‘details’ option it takes me I think, to the PureOS Store but I can’t uninstall them because it is telling me there are no packages to remove.

How can I get rid of these icons at least? I’m just trimming things down to what I need.

Thanks for anyone helping me here!

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No worries. The threads where these have been previously discussed can still be found in the archives: Parent controls do nothing and can not be removed - #3 by Quarnero and Removal of chess unwise?. It has been a while and I can’t remember what I did with it - if it was in a metapackage (collection) or a separate weather app which is package named gnome-weather, did I just remove the icon from view or something (so as not to break any dependencies, effectively the same thing as it’s not taking resources).

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Parental control install name is actually “malcontent”
and the weather app’ s install name is “gnome-weather”.

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I’ve done a bit of reading about this issue. It appears that prior to byzantium apps such as these were necessary for the operation of the OS. Removing them could have caused issues. I did read however in one of the linked threads from one of the phone developers that this was not going to be an issue when byzantium came along, which it has. But I am confused as to why they are still there? I could, of course, remove then via the command line, but I’m worried that I might break something. I just got the phone so I’m not that keen to have to reflash it. If it were a desktop distro I’d go for it but phones are not my forte so I don’t want to have to wrestle with a reinstall just yet.

So, are people just leaving these apps there? I did see a workaround where I can hide the icons, but I’d rather get rid of them as they equate to bloat for me. Any further guidance would be appreciated.

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Nope, I have removed them and I don’ t experience issues.
I have done this over a year or so.

By the way, the L5 is in fact a mini desktop with cell phone capabilities

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Thanks for telling me that. So I’ve got this correct I’d use:

sudo apt purge malcontent && sudo apt autoremove

and then the same for ‘gnome-weather’ (or however its listed)?

I don’t want to bugger it up.

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I leave the apps there, but only because I frequently reflash my Librem 5 USA and do not consider their presense important.

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I’m just a minimalist where I can. If I don’t use it I don’t want it, but the ‘parental control’ and ‘weather’ apps don’t even work. Worse than useless I’m afraid. If I can get rid of them they’re gone.

I have been a qubes user for years now after years of debian distros that I’d spend time minimizing. So the L5 is sort of a return to things I was using a long time ago so I’m just getting my bearings with it. I got so used to qubes and being able to curate things perfectly so seeing things like ‘chess’ ‘weather’ etc is newish for me.

Undoubtedly I’ll be reflashing this phone before long, but I’ll tread carefully in the meantime.

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I did not use the autoremove option, but I guess it wont harm.

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Do you remember what you did, seeing as though it worked ok?

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Just
“sudo apt remove [package name]”

Thats all there is to do.

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Thanks, yes I thought so.

I’ll give it a go.

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I suggest you download Jumpdrive to your host computer so that you can image the Librem 5’s disk. That way, if you break something badly (and injudicious apt is a good way to break things) then you can restore from backup rather than reflashing and starting again.

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