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Since I prefer to use Evolution, I would really like to completely remove Thunderbird from my PC. I already performed sudo apt-get purge thunderbird* but locate thunderbird still lists some hits:

/usr/share/app-install/desktop/thunderbird:thunderbird.desktop
/usr/share/app-install/icons/thunderbird.png
/usr/share/icons/HighContrast/scalable/apps-extra/thunderbird-icon.svg

How can I completely remove it?

5
  • 4
    did you sudo updatedb to update the locate data base? Feb 3, 2013 at 19:30
  • 1
    Thanks! Well after updatedb is better... but still few hits. Looks more like two icons and thunderbird:thunderbird.desktop
    – user40149
    Feb 3, 2013 at 19:36
  • 1
    No big deal then Feb 3, 2013 at 21:23
  • 1
    What are the full paths of those hits?
    – Sparhawk
    Feb 3, 2013 at 23:16
  • /usr/share/app-install/desktop/thunderbird:thunderbird.desktop /usr/share/app-install/icons/thunderbird.png /usr/share/icons/HighContrast/scalable/apps-extra/thunderbird-icon.svg
    – user40149
    Feb 5, 2013 at 8:52

2 Answers 2

88

This will completely remove thunderbird from your system.

sudo apt-get purge thunderbird*

Here is what went wrong in your case.

  • You will need to wait for the locate database to update, or force update by sudo updatedb before the system picks the changes. Or use locate -e to print only files existing at the time locate is run.
  • The files you see in /usr/share/app-install belong to Ubuntu Software Center.
  • The files in /usr/share/icons belong to the corresponding icon theme.
1
  • sudo apt purge thunderbird seemed to remove all for me - thunderbird* thunderbird-gnome-support* thunderbird-locale-en* thunderbird-locale-en-us*
    – jave.web
    Feb 6, 2023 at 14:21
2

A complete purge includes

  1. sudo apt-get purge thunderbird*
  2. rm -r /home/<username>/.thunderbird

then you can reinstall it from zero, otherwise, all the information in .thunderbird will still exist.

1
  • You can use rm -r ~/.thunderbird instead rm -r /home/<username>/.thunderbird
    – sotirov
    Jul 23, 2023 at 18:10

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