[Hudlug] backing up my laptop

[Ben Fowler]

On 06/07/06, Paul Brook <paul at codesourcery.com> wrote:
> > > 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 take 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 ...

You are right, and I nearly added that if you were using a .tgz based
system (such as Slackware) or any other unmanaged one then you might
have problems, but I don't think that this is anything like the same
as Windows has with its registry, and it is not something that one can
do by accident, anyway. There were a handful of other privisos that I
thought of, and left out in the interest of brevity, but basically to
"mess up" a linux system (or Mac OS X) you have to really work at it,
rather than merely work on it.

If you have a good reason to install stuff manually, then you will
probably be installing into /usr/local and/or using a special library
search path, and uninstalling your new applications is still possible
to do safely and effectively.

I recommend that people do this only if they are working on linux
itself, rather than using linux to do their work, but there are a few
execptions.

Ben.

Ben