Greg Wooledge wrote: > > Victor Sudakov wrote: > > > In FreeBSD, you can always run "pkg delete -a" and return to the > > > post-install state (well, almost). This command will remove all the > > > third-party packages added to the base system after installation > > > (modified files under /usr/local/ will remain). > > That's because (Free|Open)BSD has a completely different approach to > how they develop their operating system. Under their model, there > are two completely *separate* parts of the operating system: the base > system, and packages. Packages are add-ons that are maintained by a > separate group. They're not part of the base system. They're installed > in /usr/local, and they're tracked separately.
I know. I've been using FreeBSD for 25 years, since 1.1.5.1 probably. > > In Debian, there is no such separation. There are only "packages", and > these packages can be essential (what you'd consider part of the base > system), or frivolous, or anywhere in between. The packaging system > doesn't *know* which packages you would consider to be keep-worthy and > which ones you would consider to be fluff. Only you would know that. I probably know that the packages present at the moment of the first boot after installation are essential and keep-worthy. Can I do something useful having this knowledge now? > > So, if you want to put the work in to achieve this goal, you can come > up with a set of packages that *you* consider important enough to keep, > and then simply purge everything else. So there is no software product which would suggest to me packages for purging? Maybe even interactively? "Package XXX was installed YYY days after the system installation, would you like to purge it and its dependencies? (y/n)" That would be kinda nice. > > When you break the system, you will get to reinstall from scratch, which > is what you should have been doing in the first place, if you really want > to "clean up" a legacy installation. No, a reinstall from scratch is some Microsoft Windows approach, I'd refrain from if I possibly can. -- Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN 2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/
