Remove orphan packages in Debian

deborphan is a program that finds orphan packages and just lists them. It has other options but I am not explaining them here.


In Debian it can be installed just with:

sudo aptitude install deborphan

or

sudo apt-get install deborphan

Then, just run the program to print the list of orphan packages. It does not need root privileges as it only prints out the name of the packages.

deborphane

 Then it is up to you if you want to remove everything or just some of the packages. I am not completly sure if it is safe to remove all of them, read more in the original source.

If you want to remove one of them just use your package manager to remove them as usual:

sudo aptitude remove 'the_name_of_the_package'

Or use "purge" instead of remove to clean completly the package with all its configuration files.

source: https://www.debian-administration.org/article/134/Removing_unnecessary_packages_with_deborphan