this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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Thanks. I wish there was a more straightforward process though.
Every other OS I've used purges all app data after uninstalling, why is Linux different?
If you install something as a Flatpak, you have that option.
And Windows absolutely does not remove everything after an app is uninstalled.
(In Windows) If you uninstall a program using the "uninstall.exe" provided, you can tick an option to wipe all the data.
This is also available from the Control Panel's "Uninstall programs" page. The "uninstall" button usually launches the "uninstall.exe" provided by the app's devs.
I've never had this issue on Windows before
That is at the discretion of the developer who packaged it up. Linux is designed to NOT do such things by default, and is therefore more resilient to "oopsie" moves.
Yeah It's more reliable in that way.
Still, I wish there was a something like a simple flag for the package manager so I could control if user data gets preserved.
I'm a bit surprised that that isn't a feature.
You'd be surprised maybe how many developers don't properly remove all files they put on your computer. Adobe is notorious for this.
Package management isn't intentionally separated from running code operations for a reason. If you want to do something specific like this regularly though, just write a simple two like script that handles it for you: 1) uninstall 2) rm directories.
Yeah, if the dev provided an uninstaller, if that uninstaller really does clean everywhere, and if control panel finds and executes that uninstaller – which in my experience it very often doesn't.
To me the Flatpak way is better. But yeah, maybe system packages not doing it can be annoying sometimes. I just take issue with you saying it's not an issue on Windows when it absolutely is, and is IMO worse there.
Here's an example. I removed avast via the uninstaller on a relatives computer, it made it laggy as hell. I restart after as the uninstaller demands, but it was still there.
Searching, I find this official support option. https://support.avast.com/en-us/article/10
The official Avast Uninstall Tool, the tool to use when the included uninstaller didn't work.
The official uninstall tool didn't work either. I ran it in safe mode, like it said. Didn't work, either, but it removed some stuff, and finally let me delete some things manually. Ran it again in safe mode after that, finally seems to have removed everything.
Anyway it's a great example of if a company doesn't know what they're about, windows has no process to recover from that. Window's process is identical to a Walmart employee saying. "I dunno, man, contact the manufacturer." Genuinely, its usually enough, but when its not, there's absolutely no recourse.
I know this isn't the point but avast is more or less malware itself these days. The bundled windows defender + the free (not always running) version of malwarebytes is a good enough solution for almost everyone.
Completely agree.
The only reason the relative had it at all was because of those old fears. As soon as I learned that they had it bundled with the computer (hate that. Malware's gotta get in somewhere though I guess), I knew why it was being slow.
I hold this up as an example because even their own troubleshooting website and a program dedicated to the purpose above and beyond the usual uninstaller couldn't do it though. Avast doesn't even know its own malware.
Also this nonsense got me the chance to put mint on their computer, but the "switch to Linux" argument isn't constructive in this particular spot. They didn't end up sticking to it because a required-for-school piece of software for tests just doesn't do Linux at all. Couldn't get it to run in wine or even a virtual machine either, and they're not great at the whole computer thing so I didn't wanna be tech support for dual booting.
In the last I had very little success rate of those uninstall tools to actually do their job in full. A lot of time they delete some data but almost always they leave some trash behind.
And in the first place, I stopped trusting those external uninstall binaries, they could be designed to remove not only app data but remove your personal data, steal data from your PC or infect it (even if just to investigate why you are uninstalling).
Chrome definitely leaves permanent traces on windows when you uninstall it
And on MacOS there isn't an uninstaller too, you just send the app to the trash, but all the preferences and leftovers keep littering the drive
One of the reason is that apps can place their files in any place they want so the app manager is not aware of those locations.
Even if it would know then the user still would need a way to remove the app without deleting data, imagine installing Developer IDE or chat app and uninstall process would remove your chats or projects. Imagine app dev accidentally set the "directory that store app data" to /home, it would be bad.
I not once uninstalled app to install different (for example older) version due to bugs in new one.
Having the logic allowing to optionally delete data would introduce additional complexity so most old package managers never introduced that feature.
But I agree that we should slowly introduce a way to to that. Some app managers that manage flatpaks now allow to delete user data after uninstalling app, this now could be done universally because apps installed using flatpak store their data in their own separated/dedicated directory that flatpak engine know about so (unless you give permissions to access other location) thw manager know where the app store data so can offer easy way to remove it.
I think (?) it's generally true that the root user should never mess with users' files.
Imagine your home directory is shared across many systems on a network (my alma mater did this). It would be really bad if a sysadmin for alpha.university.edu removed a program, and suddenly your personal settings were removed from beta.university.edu
even though that computer still has the program.
This is one of the "UNIX on the desktop" issues
a lot is designed for a sysadmin/multiuser situation, and it has some gotchas when using it as a desktop machine (I'm used to/really appreciate the directory structure and settings management at this point, but it may take some getting used to).