How do I completely remove/uninstall an application?

I need to remove Pitivi video editor and Cinelerra and a few more applications, I have seen people talking about how to uninstall something completely but the problem is that I don't even know the "name" of my applications. When I say "name", I mean the name that I could put in the terminal to run/install/remove them. Please help me, my computer is running out of disk space.

1 Answer

You could use apt-cache search KEYWORDS to search for the package name which contains KEYWORDS in its description.

You can also use dpkg -l PACKAGENAME to list all installed packages that match the pattern PACKAGENAME. You can use ? (one arbitrary character) and * (any number of arbitrary characters) as wildcards.

Then use sudo apt-get autoremove --purge PACKAGE to remove PACKAGE completely, including configuration and all no longer needed dependencies.

Example for PiTiVi:

• Find out the package name:

  $ apt-cache search PiTiVi
  pitivi - non-linear audio/video editor using GStreamer

• Purge the package and its dependencies:

  $ sudo apt-get autoremove --purge pitivi
  [...some output...]