On Sun, 19 Nov 2023 12:32:00 -0800
Marc Shapiro via Dng <dng@???> wrote:

> According to aptitude, I have 443 auto-installed packages that are
> unused that it wants to uninstall.  All but 30+ of these are libs and
> python packages.
>
> Most of them are probably safe to uninstall, but not all.
>
> I have firefox and thunderbird installed from the mozilla site. I also
> have python packages installed with pip/pip3.
>
> How can I tell which auto-installed packages I actually need to mark as
> "Manually Installed" so they are not deleted?

First low hanging fruits could be removed using deborphan.
Then by making a list of what is left and then do:

for PACKAGE  in $LIST
do
    apt remove $PACKAGE  (and look what else will be removed and say y/n 
                            and mark packages you want to keep as manually installed
                                                         with apt-get install  $PACKAGE)
done 

This is a long process so you need a lot of patience.
>
> Would any of the packages installed by pip3 need any of the lib, or
> python packages that aptitude wants to uninstall?  If so, how do I tell
> which ones I need to keep?  Or is this not an issue?

You will see if something breaks and have a lot of fun debugging it,
maybe making a list of pip installed packages and try to see if the same
are available as deb packages and replace them beforehand.

Ciao,
Tito

>
> Firefox is probably not an issue.  20 of those 443 packages only show up
> after I purge firefox-esr, so if I keep them, I should be OK.  Right?
>
>
> What about thunderbird.  I never installed a Debian/Devuan version of
> thunderbird, so I can't use the same method as with firefox?  Is there a
> list of required/recommended packages anywhere?
>
>
> Marc
>
>
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