this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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Debian operating system

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Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 59000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.

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I recently (a day ago) switched from Linux Mint to Debian and tried out several different DEs. I settled on Cinnamon but still have leftover packages and files from Gnome, Plasma, etc. Is there an easy way to remove everything that was installed automatically by a particular DE besides reinstalling Debian with just Cinnamon? Or do i have to go through all my programs manually?

I've already removed the DEs i don't like with tasksel, and i've tried apt autoremove but it doesn't remove anything.

If i do have to do this manually, is there a list somewhere of the programs that come with each DE so i know which of the four plain text editors and so on to keep?

After trying a few of these alternative programs, i've decided i will go through them manually since i like some that aren't from Cinnamon. Solutions are still welcome in case someone else has this same issue.

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