How do you find and use programs that have been installed on Ubuntu? [duplicate]

Question

I recently installed a program using the terminal command sudo apt-get install, and I want to locate and use it, and delete it. (I only did it as a test and had no actual use for the file). Where can I locate the program now?

Answer 1

To locate it it, use the following command :

dpkg -L package_name

Alternatively, you can search it in Unity by pressing the launcher and typing the name of the application or package you installed. To run it as a normal user, open the terminal and type in the application name, that is, the command of the application. As an example, to run rhythmbox music player, you just opn the terminal and type in rhythmbox, and it will open.

To uninstall an application, you need aministrative priviledges, hence the need to use sudo in a command line. In uninstalling, open the terminal and type in

sudo apt-get remove application_name

and the applicaton will be removed. To remove everything that was added to the machine, including the installation folders and cache files, use :

sudo apt-get purge application_name

Answer 2

If you want to find the path of a binary you can use

which <your_binary_file>

for e.g.

[guru@guru-pc:~]$which google-chrome
/usr/bin/google-chrome

You can use dpkg -L package_name to find the location of all the files related with that package.

From man dpkg

-L, --listfiles package-name...
                  List files installed to your system from package-name.

But if you want to remove any package you should use

 sudo apt-get remove package_name

`

Answer 3

If you installed it using:

sudo apt-get install programName

You can remove it using:

sudo apt-get remove programName

That will remove the application (but might keep a few configuration files. If you want to completely remove it, use purge instead of remove).

If you want to manually delete the files that it downloaded, or if you just want to know "where" its files got installed, I believe you can do dpkg -L programName.

Answer 4

You could use the Synaptics Package Manager. To install it, run

sudo apt-get install synaptic

in a command line.

You should be able to find your package here.