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Ubuntu and Latex newbie here. Very basic question I have.

I recently installed Latex using the following code:

sudo apt-get install texlive

However, I want to uninstall this and just get the latex base for now.

I tried the following but it doesn't work:

sudo apt-get remove texlive

dpkg --get-selections | grep tex shows that a number of latex related files are installed.

How do I remove texlive?

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  • sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove texlive* Dec 9, 2018 at 17:50

4 Answers 4

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sudo apt-get remove tex-common resolved the problem for me.

7

Many other dependencies also got in when you ran sudo apt-get install texlive. When you ran the apt-get remove command, then only the texlive package was uninstalled, not its dependencies.

You can easily remove these extra unneeded dependencies by running:

sudo apt-get autoremove
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  • +1 Thanks for the explanation. I often forget that there's remove and autoremove are distinct commands.
    – ATMathew
    Apr 16, 2011 at 19:28
  • I'd suggest to avoid the autoremove option, as if you have some broken installation of something, it can really kill all your system (It happened to me twice, I had to install Ubuntu from scratch as I had many self-compiled stuff) Sep 6, 2022 at 18:23
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sudo apt-get remove texlive
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get remove tex-common

Then download and install directly from TUG. You can choose your operating system there. This has a bunch of packages and is much more complete than other distributions. Much better than sudo apt-get install latex.

2

This removes all latex packages:

sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove texlive*

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