Ubuntu – Complete Removal of Thunderbird 45.5.1 from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

aptemailthunderbirduninstall

Done all steps suggested within How to completely remove Thunderbird? and still end locating:

locate -e thunderbird
/usr/share/app-install/desktop/thunderbird:thunderbird.desktop
/usr/share/app-install/icons/thunderbird.png
/usr/share/icons/HighContrast/scalable/apps-extra/thunderbird-icon.svg
/var/cache/apt/archives/thunderbird-gnome-support_1%3a45.5.1+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_amd64.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/thunderbird-locale-de_1%3a45.5.1+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_amd64.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/thunderbird-locale-en-gb_1%3a45.5.1+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_all.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/thunderbird-locale-en-us_1%3a45.5.1+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_all.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/thunderbird-locale-en_1%3a45.5.1+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_amd64.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/thunderbird-locale-hr_1%3a45.5.1+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_amd64.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/thunderbird-locale-sr_1%3a45.5.1+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_amd64.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/thunderbird_1%3a45.5.1+build1-0ubuntu0.16.04.1_amd64.deb
/var/lib/app-info/icons/ubuntu-xenial-main/64x64/thunderbird_thunderbird.png

Is it safe to remove these files manually in the event you actually want to do fresh install of Thunderbird afterwards? This is my last attempt to get Thunderbird to work on my Ubuntu driven system since one of the mail boxes simply doesn't pull new messages using IMAP protocol no matter what I did in settings.

Best Answer

  • The stuff in /usr/share/app-install is actually part of the package app-install-data as you can see in the output of dpkg-query -S /usr/share/app-install/*thunderbird*.

  • /var/lib/app-info is generated by or for the same package.

  • /usr/share/icons/HighContrast/scalable/apps-extra/thunderbird-icon.svg is part of gnome-accessibility-themes.

  • /var/lib/apt/archives/ contains package archive files you downloaded in the past via Apt and that haven't been cleaned out yet.

You can remove all of these without serious consequences because they're either

  • program icons or launchers related to Thunderbird though not owned by Thunderbird packages or
  • cache data that will be re-downloaded or regenerated on demand,

though I don't think it's wise to corrupt packages to free a few meagre kilobytes and inodes. If you want to clear the Apt archive either manually or automatically there are cleaner, more elegant ways to achieve that (which is a topic for a different question).

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