Cannot uninstall Evolution

[Fred]

I cannot uninstall Evolution, because it depends on ubuntu-desktop, and many many other packages.

[chadwik (chadwik)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage . I have classified this bug as a bug in evolution.
For future reference you might be interested to know that a lot of applications have bug reporting functionality built in to them. This can be accessed via the Report a Problem option in the Help menu for the application with which you are having an issue. You can learn more about this feature at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that's not a bug but an user question rather

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

This is a bug.

I know how to uninstall software. I goto Add/Remove, select the software, and uncheck it, then it uninstalls.
Or, I use apt-get remove, or synaptic.

This dumb thing, just wont uninstall!

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

why won't it uninstall? what error do you get exactly?

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

Add/Remove... says;
-- Cannot remove 'evolution'
-- One or more applications depend on evolution. To remove evolution and the dependent applications, use the Synaptic package manager.

Using Synaptic, I can get rid of evolution, evolution-common, evolution-exchange, and evolution-webcal. If I try to remove evolution-data-server then it wants to remove Ekiga. If I try to remove evolution-data-server-common then it tries to remove fast-user-switch-applet, gnome-applets, gnome-panel, ubuntu-desktop, etc.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that's really an user question about what are the libraries and how they are used in GNOME not a bug

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

Well, if I try to remove evolution-data-server then it removes Ekiga.
I never told it to remove Ekiga, so I think its a bug.

If I try to remove evolution-data-server-common, then it will remove gnome-panel and cripple my Ubuntu so its broken. I think its a bug. I never told it to do that.

If I wanted remove gnome-panel, then I would do so. It shouldn't come and try to remove it, when I want to remove something completely entirely different.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

why do you insist on asking those user questions on the bug tracker? those depends are correct, evolution-data-server is used by those applications to get stored information and the depends are correct, you don't understand what evolution-data-server is used not only by evolution apparently but that's not a bug

[Fred (eldmannen+launchpad)]

Well, if its not only used by Evolution, then perhaps it should have a smarter name. Like gnome-data-server or something.
Because, I don't want Evolution on my computer.

When I do 'ps aux | grep evolution' it still lists evolution-data-server, which I thought I don't want or need, because I don't want or use Evolution.

Because, if I want to uninstall something, and I cant, then I think thats a bug.

[Larry Abee (larryabee)]

I myself have tried removing evolution before since I have no use for it at all, as in the past and currently Ubuntu fails to remove the unwanted evolution package, so its still there and I just ignore it, it does not seem to be a bug tho more like how evolution depends on so many libs to work

[oss_test_launchpad (oss-test-launchpad)]

@ Sebastien Bacher: This user has not asked a question, he has described a bug. Another user has confirmed this bug. It is not invalid. It is not "Wishlist" either, unless you think that every bug posted on Launchpad should be labelled "Wishlist" because the users WISH this bug not to occur.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

This isn't a bug though. As already pointed out, there are lots of desktop components that currently (correctly) depend on evolution-data-server as they use features of it. If you want to remove e-d-s, then you will also have to remove those components that depend on it too.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

And, AFAICT, the only package which cannot be removed is evolution-data-server-common, which doesn't actually contain anything other than a few icons and glade files used by other components. It doesn't actually contain any evolution executable code or libraries If that is the only package you have still got installed, then you've pretty much completely removed evolution already.

[weebles (zooperman)]

Why does removing Evolution also remove "gnome-dbg"? Which is debugging symbols for the entire gnome desktop.

Is the logic that to debug the gnome desktop you need an office app that provides group communications and a calendar? Is it a diabolical microsoft style trick by an Evolution fanboy to make sure everybody has Evolution installed and is tying Evolution to totally unrelated packages to achieve their evil goals?

Maybe it's not a "bug" in the traditional defect sense... but it sure is a "bug" in a "this really bugs me" kind of way. Or just really annoying/bad design.

=)

[weebles (zooperman)]

This all seems EXACTLY like not being able to remove Internet Explorer from windoze without crippling the GUI.

Hmm....

[Chuck Money (chuckdmoney)]

Well...a debate over if this is a real bug or not is not one I will go into, however, I would like to say one thing about this.

Having tried Linux Mint, I can tell you for certain that there is NOTHING about the GNOME desktop that actually requires ANY part of evolution, INCLUDING evolution-data-server. The e-d-s package is listed in Synaptic (when you try to remove it) as being depended on by practically everything short of the kernel, and yet Mint (7 and 8) ship without it, so this is clearly just a dependency for the sake of dependencies.

I know the common argument any time someone mentions getting rid of evolution is "it's just a few MB of space, so ignore it." The problem is, I have an ASUS EEE 901 which only has 20GB of space, and I recently "upgraded" my main laptop from a 320GB HDD to a 64GB SDD. Even 100MB comes at a premium right now, ESPECIALLY for something I have absolutely zero intention of ever launching again.

So, while this may or may not be a bug, I think it's fair to say that for Ubuntu/Synaptic/APT to list something like gnome-panel as depending on evolution-data-server is a major design flaw. Somehow, I had GNOME, Firefox, Totem, and Pidgin all running flawlessly in Mint, without any trace of evolution-data-server, but this cannot be done in Ubuntu. Personally, I would still be using Mint if not for the Firefox search addon they have that's a pain to remove. I like having MP3/MP4 playback working out of the box, and I really, really hate Evolution ever since it crashed (and would not reload) 7 minutes before I had to file a court document (I'm a paralegal.) I will never use it again, even if they do fix the 9-year-old bug that makes it randomly corrupt its own message index. If others want to set themselves up for that kind of catastrophe, fine, but don't force me to keep e-d-s installed when CLEARLY it's not a true dependency of ANYTHING.

In the mean time, I think I'm going to say to hell with it all and manually edit that file which dpkg (/var/something, I forget now...) uses to track dependencies so I can remove it and not ditch all of GNOME with it. I'd bet almost anything that Ubuntu runs as well without e-d-s as Mint does.