[SOLVED] Is apt autoremove safe

[zolthar]

Yes it is a really basic question - however I have some a small anxiety with autoremove.

Yes I have tested on a test platform and that works perfectly, however is there anything that anyone would suggest just incase as a precautionary step?

EDIT: Sorry, this is wrong thread, should be under PMG - can admin please move or delete this post?

 

[sterzy]

if you take a look at the manual page for apt (you can do that with man apt) you will find the following for autoremove:

autoremove is used to remove packages that were automatically installed to satisfy dependencies for other packages and are now no longer needed as dependencies changed or the package(s) needing them were removed in the meantime.

You should check that the list does not include applications you have grown to like even though they were once installed just as a dependency of another package. You can mark such a package as manually installed by using apt-mark(8). Packages which you have installed explicitly via install are also never proposed for automatic removal.

So as long as you do not use anything directly that is not marked as manually installed, you should be fine.