Mike McClain wrote: > Is there any way to determine which packages are used of the many > that come with an install? > My Raspberry Pi install of bookworm has some 1800 packages > installed many of which I know I don't use, many others I suspect I > don't use but don't know if some program I do use depends on them at > some point in its life. > $ apropos editor | wc reports 23 hits > Six of which are various versions of VI which I don't use but pico, > nano, mcedit, mousepad and mu-editor are also included. I only use jed > but don't know what would break if I purged the others and am loathe > to break a working system. > There are 259 packages whose name starts with 'python', admittedly I > could purge one a week and see if anything breaks, that would only take > 5 years but I'm not quite that patient. > > Suggestions?
Pick a suspect package and run apt-cache rdepends --installed PACKAGE That shows you all the packages which are installed and depend on this PACKAGE. That saves you from the uninstall-and-see-what-breaks dance. -dsr-
