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Ubuntu 13.04 – How to Completely Uninstall / Remove the Cinnamon Desktop

These instructions are for Ubuntu 13.04 running the Unity desktop on which Cinnamon was installed using either the Ubuntu Software Center or sudo apt-get on the command line.

The instructions may be the same for other versions of Ubuntu, but no guarantee is made.

When Cinnamon is installed in Ubuntu 13.04, it installs several packages and libraries it requires. Not all these packages and libraries are uninstalled when you uninstall Cinnamon. Several packages do not get uninstalled.

Quick Uninstall

This is not recommended because it will remove all packages normally installed with Cinnamon. This may include packages you previously installed or packages previously installed by other applications.

Note: this uninstall command assumes Cinnamon was installed on a fresh Ubuntu 13.04.

1) Open a terminal (instructions can be found here).

2) Enter the following command (it is very long and a single line):

sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove cinnamon cinnamon-common gir1.2-accountsservice-1.0 gir1.2-caribou-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-1.0 gir1.2-cogl-1.0 gir1.2-coglpango-1.0 gir1.2-gconf-2.0 gir1.2-gdesktopenums-3.0 gir1.2-gkbd-3.0 gir1.2-gnomedesktop-3.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 gir1.2-muffin-3.0 gir1.2-polkit-1.0 gir1.2-upowerglib-1.0 gir1.2-xkl-1.0 gjs libcaribou-common libcaribou0 libgjs0c libjs-jquery libmozjs185-1.0 libmuffin0 mesa-utils muffin-common

It is easiest to copy the line and paste it into the terminal (right-click on the terminal and select Paste from the popup menu).

Preferred Uninstall

The better way to uninstall it is to follow the directions on this page.

This will show you on how to uninstall only the packages that were installed when Cinnamon was installed. The instructions are generic and work for any installed package.

It involves:

  1. identifying which packages were installed and
  2. creating a command to uninstall only those packages

It leaves intact any packages you may have installed or that were installed by other packages instead of blindly assuming that they were installed along with Cinnamon.

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2 Comments

  • 1111 says:
    April 20, 2014 at 9:53 am

    thank you, helpful +++

    • admin says:
      April 24, 2014 at 6:57 am

      Thanks for the feedback. Although, it appears that in Ubuntu 14.04 (and 13.10), the Software Center does a much better job at cleanup and actually removes all the files that (in previous versions) were left behind – still need to do a little more testing to confirm this.