What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

Pirx · 2025-03-15 19:56:07

I always remove majority of programs in Internet section. Web browsers and uGet are the only ones that stay. Clipboard manager and media players different than MPV go, as well.

I install (if they are not already included) Geany, Gimp, ccrypt, MPV, mp3gain, ffmpeg, uGet, yt-dlp (versions from repos are often outdated), LibreOffice, Brave, Librewolf. Untill not so long ago, git and some interpreters and compilers were on my list, too (Ruby, Julia, Nim, V and Odin), but recently I've decided to take a break from coding.

Last edited by Pirx (2025-03-15 20:09:47)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-03-16 10:28:42

I quite like having all of GNOME's utilities so I leave them installed. A consistent desktop pleases me.

I have to install vim & ranger/lf and change the shell to oksh or mksh but the only major component I add is Pandoc because I prefer to write articles in markdown so I can output PDFs, HTML and Word documents without having to learn lots of different systems. Pandoc is awesome :-)

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2025-03-16 10:29:54)

beaker · 2025-03-16 19:23:41

install vifm/broot/ncdu/mpv/vim/nsxiv/git sometimes noice and clifm

Last edited by beaker (2025-03-16 19:24:21)

Döbbie03 · 2025-03-17 04:56:43

I used to remove anything that was distro-centric, any double apps, and normally replaced the defaults with my preferred options. But other than ArchLabs, I would always install Arch from scratch, so it was always what I wanted.

Now with Gentoo, it's the same.

chroot · 2025-03-17 12:30:20

Döbbie03 wrote:

I used to remove anything that was distro-centric, any double apps, and normally replaced the defaults with my preferred options. But other than ArchLabs, I would always install Arch from scratch, so it was always what I wanted.
Now with Gentoo, it's the same.

I am with you @Döbbie03, always do a minimum install and then add other software piece by piece, except for AL.:)

greenjeans · 2025-03-17 15:11:45

For me first thing to do was always remove translations/localizations, still do when I build my own.

But yeah as others have said, once I learned to build my own that's what I have done ever since.

Döbbie03 · 2025-03-18 04:34:11

chroot wrote:

Döbbie03 wrote:
I used to remove anything that was distro-centric, any double apps, and normally replaced the defaults with my preferred options. But other than ArchLabs, I would always install Arch from scratch, so it was always what I wanted.
Now with Gentoo, it's the same.
I am with you @Döbbie03, always do a minimum install and then add other software piece by piece, except for AL.:)

Well, AL was especially good

Colonel Panic · 2025-03-18 17:42:06

The first thing I install is always the mc (Midnight Commander) file manager if it isn't there already, because I use it to do so many things including moving and copying files between folders, unarchiving tar and zip files, viewing of text files etc. Then either or both of the full version of Vim or Neovim for text file writing.

After that it depends on what is already installed. I usually have SMPlayer and sometimes strawberry for multimedia, Geeqie for viewing images, gedit for editing my bookmark file, qalculate! for calculation and either Epyrus or Betterbird for an e-mail client.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2025-03-19 09:39:52)

Colonel Panic · 2026-10-04 14:29:52

Just to add to this; I've just used ncdu to troubleshoot a situation where my partition was getting unexpectedly full, and found it did the job. I've also installed, and am now running, BleachBit to try and clear up some of the excess baggage in the partition, so I'm adding that one to my list.

I'll have a look at some of the suggestions other people have made in the thread (such as vifm). Because I'm trying to limit the size of my installation to what I can snapshot (snapshoot?) and then burn off to a DVD-r, I'm a bit restricted in what or how much I can install.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (2026-10-05 07:38:33)

johnraff · Yesterday 01:58:07

Colonel Panic wrote:

I've just used ncdu to troubleshoot a situation where my partition was getting unexpectedly full, and found it did the job.

I find ncdu very handy at times - sometimes the quickest way to find where your space is being eaten up.

greenjeans · Yesterday 14:59:47

Both ncdu and Bleachbit are potential foot-guns of the first order, caution is advised!

One note about Bleachbit: If you are using it to get rid of localizations that's fine, but you should whitelist /usr/share/i18n. When localizing just for en (english) bleachbit removes one or more files too many currently, haven't had time to narrow down what it's doing wrong, but the effect is you won't get en as your system locale, it will drop you to UTF-8/C for locale and you'll see complaints in terminal for things. That folder isn't too large anyway, the only large file in there is cns11643_stroke at 4.3 mb, it's the Chinese/Taiwanese character set, and if you don't need that language it's safe to manually remove it.

Have a look in /var, lots of potential bloat in there, old logs, old cache files, old backups etc. In /var/lib/dpkg you may find "status-old" and that file is a few mb's that can be removed for a snapshot, it might also have "diversions-old" which is small but also can be removed. Also in /var/cache/debconf there may be a couple of files appended with "-old" you can delete.

In /var/log as root you can run "logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.conf" and it will force rotate all the logs and then you can delete all the old ones.

If you're about to run a snapshot there's no need for all the Apt package lists so let Bleachbit take those out, it will also remove the bin files in /var/cache/apt which is about another 75-80 mb in saved space.

johnraff · Today 04:27:54

greenjeans wrote:

Both ncdu and Bleachbit are potential foot-guns of the first order, caution is advised!

Bleachbit I can see, but what's the problem with ncdu? It's just an ncurses wrapper round du which displays disk usage.

Colonel Panic · Today 08:26:11

Good posts. The main thing I uncheck when I run Bleachbit is Passwords for all my browsers, because it's a real pain to have to put all those in again when I'm booting up a live disk, and "Memory" because I lose that when I turn the machine off in any case.

Last edited by Colonel Panic (Today 11:31:39)

darknetmatrix · Today 14:06:56

Döbbie03 wrote:

chroot wrote:
Döbbie03 wrote:
I used to remove anything that was distro-centric, any double apps, and normally replaced the defaults with my preferred options. But other than ArchLabs, I would always install Arch from scratch, so it was always what I wanted.
Now with Gentoo, it's the same.
I am with you @Döbbie03, always do a minimum install and then add other software piece by piece, except for AL.:)
Well, AL was especially good

AL was the best, it's a shame the project was shut down.

greenjeans · Today 15:14:15

johnraff wrote:

greenjeans wrote:
Both ncdu and Bleachbit are potential foot-guns of the first order, caution is advised!
Bleachbit I can see, but what's the problem with ncdu? It's just an ncurses wrapper round du which displays disk usage.

Haven't used it myself, but from the description of it:

"Users can navigate the list using the arrow keys and delete files that are taking up too much space by pressing the 'd' key."

Is that not the case? Accidental D press could be bad I reckon, but perhaps the description is wrong, or at minimum they have a confirmation dialog.

Sector11 · Today 16:05:26

greenjeans wrote:

Is that not the case? Accidental D press could be bad I reckon, but perhaps the description is wrong, or at minimum they have a confirmation dialog.

It has a confirm dialogue:

TestFolder has 5 copied files in it.

     Confirm delete
Are you sure you want to delete "TestFolder"
                       and all it's contents?
      [yes]      [no]      [don't ask me again]

[no] is highlighted

Nice, I like ncdu ... ? gives:

┌───ncdu help──────────────1:Keys───2:Format───3:About──┐
│                                                          │
│       up, k  Move cursor up                              │
│     down, j  Move cursor down                            │
│ right/enter  Open selected directory                     │
│  left, <, h  Open parent directory                       │
│           n  Sort by name (ascending/descending)         │
│           s  Sort by size (ascending/descending)         │
│           C  Sort by items (ascending/descending)        │
│           M  Sort by mtime (-e flag)                     │
│           d  Delete selected file or directory           │
│           t  Toggle dirs before files when sorting       │
│           g  Show percentage and/or graph                │
│           a  Toggle between apparent size and disk usage │
│           c  Toggle display of child item counts         │
│           m  Toggle display of latest mtime (-e flag)    │
│           e  Show/hide hidden or excluded files          │
│           i  Show information about selected item        │
│           r  Recalculate the current directory           │
│           b  Spawn shell in current directory            │
│           q  Quit ncdu                                   │
│                                                          │
│                                         Press q to close │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

greenjeans · Today 19:07:51

Cool thanks for the explanation Sector11! I just saw that bit about hitting "d" to delete and I was like yikes.

#1 2025-03-15 19:56:07

What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#2 2025-03-16 10:28:42

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#3 2025-03-16 19:23:41

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#4 2025-03-17 04:56:43

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#5 2025-03-17 12:30:20

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#6 2025-03-17 15:11:45

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#7 2025-03-18 04:34:11

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#8 2025-03-18 17:42:06

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#9 2026-10-04 14:29:52

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#10 Yesterday 01:58:07

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#11 Yesterday 14:59:47

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#12 Today 04:27:54

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#13 Today 08:26:11

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#14 Today 14:06:56

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#15 Today 15:14:15

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#16 Today 16:05:26

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

#17 Today 19:07:51

Re: What do you remove and/or install after a fresh OS instalation?

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