Uninstall Steam Beta on Ubuntu 12

Question

I uninstalled steam beta via sudo apt-get remove steam, but it doesn't remove ~/.steam and ~/.local/Steam where most of the files are. Is the Uninstaller corrupt?

Answer 1

When you run apt-get remove <package>, it only removes the package itself, not the data files created by the application. apt-get never removes config/data files from users' home directories, so you'll have to delete these manually. sudo apt-get purge steam removes all general config files, if they exist (usually in /etc or /var/lib).

As an example, let's think about a server running MySQL and creating huge databases. Now, if I want to switch from MySQL to Percona Server, I don't want my databases to be removed when I run apt-get remove mysql-server && apt-get install percona-server, but instead I want the server itself replaced with the new package.

The same could be said for desktop tools such as Picasa if that's more easily approachable. You wouldn't want to lose your photo library when you remove the application itself, would you?