[Hudlug] backing up my laptop

[Paul Brook]

> > Don't know if Linux has this same problem where for example you might
> > try an application, find it may not work for you and you try and
> > uninstall it and it leaves bits behind.
>
> In general: "No" linux has no problem in this direction. I would go
> one or more steps further and state that all distros taje steps to
> make uninstalling a package the mirror image of installing it, and in
> fact Debian (on which your Ubuntu is based) is the best of breed in
> this regard.

If you start building and installing stuff manually it's just as easy to screw 
up a linux install. Linux tends not to suffer so much because:

(a) Most linux users don't have administrator privileges, so scrogging the 
whole system takes deliberate effort. Windows users tends to everything as an 
admin user so it's near impossible to stop installers stomping all over your 
system.

(b) Linux tends to come as part of a distribution which includes most[1] the 
software you want prepackaged, if not preinstalled. On windows everything 
uses third party installers, many of which are poorly written.

It's also much more common to be able to install a program in ~/foo as a 
normal user, then blow away the whole directory once you're done.

After building and installing something from source people often ask "how do I 
uninstall this". The answer is you don't. You either user a proper package 
management system (eg. dpkg or rpm) or you install in a separate directory 
and "uninstall" with rm -rf.

Paul

[1] Depends on the distro and mow much evil proprietary software you want to 
use.