Trying to uninstall libcaca, "the industry-standard colour ASCII-art library"

[Klutz]

I'm trying to unbloat my Mint installation (20.1) as much as possible and came across several libraries connected to libcaca. Trying to uninstall one (sudo apt remove libcaca-dev) results in removing

Code: Select all

libcaca-dev libsdl-gfx1.2-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-net1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl1.2-dev

or all (sudo apt remove libcaca*) of them gave me a huge list of programs that seem to depend on it:

Code: Select all

audio-recorder dosbox ffmpeg gnome-subtitles gstreamer1.0-plugins-good hypnotix kazam libavdevice58 libcaca-dev libcaca0 libcacard0 libgegl-0.3-0 libmpv-dev libmpv1 libsdl-gfx1.2-5 libsdl-gfx1.2-dev libsdl-image1.2 libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2 libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-net1.2 libsdl-net1.2-dev libsdl-pango1 libsdl-perl libsdl-sound1.2 libsdl-ttf2.0-0 libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl1.2-dev libsdl1.2debian lmms mencoder mplayer nemo-preview orca rhythmbox rhythmbox-plugins transcode virtualbox virtualbox-ext-pack virtualbox-qt vlc vlc-plugin-base vlc-plugin-video-output winff winff-gtk2 xplayer-thumbnailer

I frankly doubt any of these programs truly depend on color ASCII art. Is there a way to remove libcaca without wreaking havoc on ones installation?

[Flemur]

I frankly doubt any of these programs truly depend on color ASCII art. Is there a way to remove libcaca without wreaking havoc on ones installation?

It is pretty silly, but, poking around on the internet, it (libcacaX) is considered a requirement for ffmpeg... in ubuntu.

In 'linux from scratch' it's optional; it's libcaca also a compile/build flag for making ffmpeg.

But, I,too, enjoy removing worthless, space-wasting software, and have found the synaptic is the easiest way to do that: click the "Size" column (click the left-most column to put installed packages at the top**) and it shows how much disk space the package uses (libcaca0 only uses about 1MB of space (1077kB), hardly worth worrying about), also you can set whether or not optional packages are installed because they're considered requirements (un-checked under 'Marking Changes'):
(click to make it look better)

** the synaptic GUI is goofy - click the columns until it works right.

Edit: here's an example of the package sizes; I've removed a lot of the most bloated, like the Mint-* themes, worthless fonts, etc...

Edit2: I just ran an 'update' and libcaca is one of them...

[spamegg]

I frankly doubt any of these programs truly depend on color ASCII art. Is there a way to remove libcaca without wreaking havoc on ones installation?

If apt says they depend on it, then they depend on it. There could be a whole number of reasons why some ASCII is needed by various programs to display correctly.

I would advise you to stop trying to manually "unbloat" Mint. You'll end up breaking a lot of things. This is a leftover Windows habit, I also tried to do the same thing when I first switched. Don't worry about library packages, just trust apt to do its job correctly. The library packages are usually tiny anyway.

Follow this tutorial: https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... -mint.html