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I want to completely remove Unity-2D (not Unity) on Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04. I used dpkg -l | grep unity-2d to list the packages which belongs to Unity-2D. The result was this:

 ii  libunity-2d-private0    5.12.0-0ubuntu1.1    Unity 2D shared library
 ii  unity-2d                5.12.0-0ubuntu1.1    Unity interface for non-accelerated graphics cards
 ii  unity-2d-common         5.12.0-0ubuntu1.1    Unity 2D Panel
 ii  unity-2d-shell          5.12.0-0ubuntu1.1    Dash and Launcher for the Unity 2D environment
 ii  unity-2d-spread         5.12.0-0ubuntu1.1    Unity 2D Spread

Now I want to remove those packages with:

 sudo apt-get purge unity-2d unity-2d-common unity-2d-panel unity-2d-shell unity-2d-spread libunity-2d-private0

Then I get a the following message:

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libunity-2d-private0* ubuntu-desktop* unity-2d* unity-2d-common* unity-2d-panel* unity-2d-shell* unity-2d-spread*

which means that the package ubuntu-desktop should also removed. But the decription from that package apt-cache show ubuntu-desktop says:

Description-en: The Ubuntu desktop system
 This package depends on all of the packages in the Ubuntu desktop system
 .
 It is also used to help ensure proper upgrades, so it is recommended that
 it not be removed.

that it should not be removed, because it is needed to ensure a successful system-update.

How can I remove Unity-2D without removing Ubuntu-Desktop?

BuZZ-dEE
  • 14,533

2 Answers2

4

It is perfectly okay to remove ubuntu-desktop package if you want to remove Unity and Unity-2D. Because ubuntu-desktop is a meta package and used to pull the standard packages in an Ubuntu Desktop installation. Since you are removing a dependency of Ubuntu-Desktop package, it will be removed too.

But, you don't need to worry. You won't lose anything by removing it. You might take a look at this question.

For the specific query:

How can I remove Unity-2D without removing Ubuntu-Desktop?

You just cannot. There is no way to have Ubuntu-Desktop package with Unity-2D removed without being please with a broken package system.

Community
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Anwar
  • 77,855
-1

Remove or modify the file /usr/share/xsessions/ubuntu-2d.desktop. For example, do

sudo mv /usr/share/xsessions/ubuntu-2d.desktop /root/ubuntu-2d.desktop.backup

Unfortunately, you cannot selectively remove the 2D libraries from the system without breaking the dependencies, because the authors of Ubuntu decided that 2D is mandatory for Ubuntu.

EDIT: If you want to remove Unity-2D (but only Unity-2D, not anything else), there are two strategies:

  1. Go with loosing Unity-Desktop. This will not remove the other unity libraries, as Unity-Desktop is just a meta-package, it's purpose is to depend on a large number of other packages such that by installing this single package, you also install all these dependencies.

  2. (much, much harder) Create a dummy meta-package that provides the Unity-2D package, but does not install any files.

BuZZ-dEE
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January
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