How to manage the softwares listed in the "Show Applications" but not detected by apt/snap

x.y.z liu

3/26/24, 11:22 PM

I installed a bunch of NVIDIA tools (e.g. nvidia nsight compute; nvidia visual profiler) by directly downloading an installation package from their website. Now I want to remove all these NVIDIA softwares using apt sudo apt purge nvidiabut apt reported that none of them is installed. I also tried dpkg --list nvidia, but nothing was listed either. But these softwares are listed in the "Show Applications".

I tried snap too. It cannot detect these packages either.

2 + 1

package-management

apt

software-uninstall

Organic Marble

3/27/24, 1:19 AM

How you remove software depends on how you installed it. Since you did not install it using apt, it is unsurprising that apt cannot remove it. Same for dpkg. Was the "installation package" you downloaded a script? More information is needed. In short, tell us what you did to get into this situation, in detail.

Score:0

Ubuntu

Archisman Panigrahi

3/27/24, 3:04 AM

Enter the command apt search nvidia | grep installed to list all the installed packages whose names contain the string "nvidia".

Then remove the packages you don't need.

+ 0

Score:0

Ubuntu

vanadium

3/27/24, 9:49 AM

1. Manually installing and removing software

As soon as you choose to install software by other ways than the package management systems APT or SNAP, you are in charge yourself. There is little standardization. Installation methods may range from running a vendor installed installation program or script to compiling the application yourself and manually copying files in place.

Thus, it is up to you to be informed about third party applications you choose to install. Depending on the application, there may or may not be an automated method to remove it.

2. "Show applications"

"Show applications" provides icons for installed applications in order to launch them. Such icons are provided by desktop launchers, small text files with the .desktop extension. Such desktop launchers describe how the program is started, what icon must be used to represent it, and other information for the desktop environment.

These .desktop launchers live in dedicated standard directories, where the desktop environment is supposed to find them. These standard directories are directories named applications under the directories listed in the XDG_DATA_DIRS environmental variable. You can see that list of directories with the command printenv XDG_DATA_DIRS. They will only appear in the "Applications overview" if they point to an existing executable.

When using SNAP or APT, these files are automatically installed and removed if you install or remove the software. For manual installations, the installation program of the application, if any, may install them as well. Else, you may need to locate and remove them manually.

+ 1

x.y.z liu

3/29/24, 2:47 PM

Thanks so much. These Nvidia apps come with CUDA, which is installed via a script downloaded from the Nvidia website. I managed to find the path of these apps in the .desktop files

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