I've been around a few distros now and none of them let you uninstall a program from GUI such as the application "start" menu. Is there a technical reason for this? A right-click 'remove' seems like a no-brainer for me.
(I know there is Software Center, which is a piece of crap btw. I'm on Elementary OS atm, came from Manjaro + others.)
I do not know for sure, but my humble thoughts come up with this as explanation:
Desktop environments are actually separate from the base, aka distro; so the Makers of the DE would have to make their software know on what they run (apt-get, yum, rpm, ...) for that to work.
Which sure could work, but I guess either is not on the radar of the devs or not a priority for them.
you could give synaptics a shot.. not so pretty but works great.
Does any OS do this?
Software center on elementary OS is junk, but other newer versions arent.
In gnome you can right click > show details, and uninstall that way.
What version? On 3.16.4 - which came with latest ubuntu gnome, I do not get that menu entry
I'm not really in trouble. I'm just thinking there are a number of things like this that stop me from recommending Linux to more casual friends. Especially when Elementary OS is a noob OS. I've never owned a mac but i'm pretty sure u drag and drop the icon in the trash to uninstall.
Well maybe I am. I had icons for an app called Lollypop. Sudo apt-get remove got rid of one. Now i'm thinking about how to get rid of the other.
3.18.4 is what im on.
3.20 is looking to be a good release as well.
I know what you mean but just because it may not have been done before doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. It seems both logical and technically achievable. I'm curious.
Hope so =D
Just as in windows, removal scripts can fail in linux as well. I guess its a left behind .desktop file... you could search you drive for the name of the entry.. and manually delete the whatthenameis.desktop entry.
Well gnome essentially achieves what you want, so its there, just in the opposite order than what you were thinking. info > uninstall rather than uninstall > confirm.
Good to know. Thanks for the info :D
Mint Cinnamon does this as well. Don't know if it's thanks to Cinnamon or Mint, I haven't tried Cinnamon on other distros or Mint with other DEs.
The whole post I kept imagining that being a thing and a child helping you by removing stuff so he could find his programs easier or a co-worker walking by with a screw you attitude removing things with a quick two to three click process.
Haha, fair enough. You wouldn't be able to uninstall something without a password in Linux.
mhmm...
Indeed, but you should always LOCK your machine when leaving it! Basic security begins with Win/super + L easy done, high effective.
And a child I would not have the my PC with high enough rights anyhow.
I know that Ubuntu does this by default with Unity. I have only seen this with Ubuntu 14.04 or newer so I can't speak for the older releases.