How to uninstall totem

[HisDudeness]

Moved to new thread - by Moderator

Hi everyone! I hope not to necro uselessly, but I have a different problem concerning the removal of totem in LMDE,
so I guessed I could avoid littering the forum with a brand new thread.

I installed LMDE via the 201403 iso, meaning that I don't have both Cinnamon and MATE installed. I'm using the first one.

I'd wish to uninstall totem as, being a LMDE users since a couple of years (had to reinstall recently), I never happened to use it. Also, I'd want to prevent conflicts in the default applications, as I've sporadically found some bugs in which I couldn't change the default application with which a certain file type would be opened. Anyway, if I address any command for the removal of the program, mplayer, gecko-mediaplayer and a couple of dependencies get installed automatically, leading to more space being taken than freed, and more software being installed than removed.

Totem's packages I have installed are: totem, totem-common and totem-mozilla. Here are the terminal outputs for the removal of each package (I note no difference between remove and purge in this):

sudo apt-get remove totem

Code: Select all

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
Suggested packages:
  libdiscid0-dbg libgda-5.0-bin libgda-5.0-mysql libgda-5.0-postgres
  libgmlib1-dbg libgmtk1-dbg
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mint-meta-codecs* mint-meta-debian-codecs* totem* totem-mozilla*
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
0 upgraded, 12 newly installed, 4 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 5,954 kB of archives.
After this operation, 19.0 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

sudo apt-get remove totem-common

Code: Select all

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
Suggested packages:
  libdiscid0-dbg libgda-5.0-bin libgda-5.0-mysql libgda-5.0-postgres
  libgmlib1-dbg libgmtk1-dbg
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mint-meta-codecs mint-meta-debian-codecs totem totem-common totem-mozilla
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
0 upgraded, 12 newly installed, 5 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 5,954 kB of archives.
After this operation, 11.2 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

sudo apt-get remove totem-mozilla

Code: Select all

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
Suggested packages:
  libdiscid0-dbg libgda-5.0-bin libgda-5.0-mysql libgda-5.0-postgres
  libgmlib1-dbg libgmtk1-dbg
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mint-meta-codecs mint-meta-debian-codecs totem-mozilla
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
0 upgraded, 12 newly installed, 3 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 5,954 kB of archives.
After this operation, 19.6 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

sudo apt-get remove totem*

Code: Select all

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'totem-plugin-arte' for regex 'totem*'
Note, selecting 'totem-gstreamer' for regex 'totem*'
Note, selecting 'totem-plugins' for regex 'totem*'
Note, selecting 'totem' for regex 'totem*'
Note, selecting 'totem-common' for regex 'totem*'
Note, selecting 'totem-mozilla' for regex 'totem*'
Note, selecting 'totem-plugins-dvb-daemon' for regex 'totem*'
Note, selecting 'totem-dbg' for regex 'totem*'
Package 'totem-gstreamer' is not installed, so not removed
Package 'totem-plugins-dvb-daemon' is not installed, so not removed
Package 'totem-dbg' is not installed, so not removed
Package 'totem-plugins' is not installed, so not removed
Package 'totem-plugin-arte' is not installed, so not removed
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
Suggested packages:
  libdiscid0-dbg libgda-5.0-bin libgda-5.0-mysql libgda-5.0-postgres
  libgmlib1-dbg libgmtk1-dbg
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mint-meta-codecs mint-meta-debian-codecs totem totem-common totem-mozilla
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer libbs2b0 libdiscid0 libgda-5.0-4
  libgda-5.0-common libgmlib1 libgmtk1 libgmtk1-data libjs-jquery
  libmusicbrainz3-6 mplayer2
0 upgraded, 12 newly installed, 5 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 5,954 kB of archives.
After this operation, 11.2 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

Can anyone explain me why this is happening, and help me remove an undesired software?

[nomko]

Beside removing totem, apt-get will also remove unnecessary packages or packages which aren't required any longer by any other application. Nothing to worry about, just run the command and accept with Y(es).

[Monsta]

I can't explain this behavior of apt-get, but looks like you'll have to explicitly remove mint-meta-debian-codecs as well:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get remove totem totem-common totem-plugins totem-mozilla mint-meta-debian-codecs

Weird... mint-meta-debian-codecs depends on totem-mozilla | gecko-mediaplayer, and somehow it pulls in gecko-mediaplayer despite the fact that mint-meta-debian-codecs itself is being marked for removal.

[HisDudeness]

Even if this strange behavior remains a mystery, Monsta's answer allowed me to remove totem successfully, so the thread's problem is solved. Can this be submitted as a LMDE's bug?

[Monsta]

LMDE will move to Jessie in about two months I think, so filing a bug report is kinda useless now. The software in LMDE UP8 is outdated (the snapshot of Debian Testing has been taken in December 2013). The newer software from Jessie might have this bug (?) fixed.

I'm not even sure it's a bug. It's probably some apt-get logic which I don't understand yet.