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I think I will write a tutorial about this on my site. I write this las lines because sometimes, when we uninstall the first time, we just do a pacman -R which leaves configuration files behind, so we should do pacman -Rsn so when it uninstalls something, removes the config files and the dependencies that package installed. If you want to use locate, it is under the name of mlocate on the repo. Some tools that help a lot with this type of purge are awk, less, locate, grep and a text editor (I use VIM). This last warning is for you to notice, in that list of pack's is kernel26, your current kernel, so if you uninstall it, the next time you reboot you will not be able to start your system and you will have to do a bunch of stuff to re-install your kernel (if there is a chance to it). Before you uninstall one package you don't know what it does (in the case of uninstalling packages needed by others or whith weird names) google it so you be sure enough to uninstall it. When you see something that you don't need, you just unistall it and if it complains about some other package needing it, you should be aware that you need to uninstall that one too.
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You can pass 1 or 2 hours using ' pacman -Rsn ' package by package so you can see who needs every package. Then open the list and read the (long) list of pack's.ĪTTENTION!!!! : DO NOT UNINSTALL ALL THE PACKAGES YOU SEE, IT WILL BREAK YOUR SYSTEM. That command makes a list of your "orphans" and creates a file with that list. When the problem is the classic "I have installed a bunch of stuff and deps for those pack's and don't know what those are and they are lost somewhere on the system" You should read (And really read, not just a few lines) the man for pacman or the wiki, but just in case you need it again some time soon, first find the "orphans" (pack's that have no father pack,i.e. First, if the problem is configuration, the answer is always backup your configuration file and delete it (I prefer just move the file changing the name like nf to ) and re-start the application. There is always a path to follow when this happens. The whole purpose of Archlinux is to have the system as clean a you want it so it is a bad habit to re-install things just to avoid "fixing" the mistakes that you did.