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Comment by npteljes | Hacker News Reader

Apt purge cleans up user config files after a package, but not package dependencies. For complete package removal, apt autoremove is needed even after apt purge.

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So apt uninstall -> apt purge -> apt autoremove

That looks like an unnecessarily long process to safely remove a package. Why isn't that the default behavior on Debian?

You can skip the uninstall if you use purge.

And aptitude (alternative package manager) automatically removes dependent but not required anymore packages when removing/purging a package.

There's also autopurge, which can take arguments of additional packages to purge, like autoremove. So you only really need _one_ command.

True, but its output suggests that you do that and tells you what it would autoremove.

Indeed. So it not only doesn't do a complete job, it "takes prisoners" too. Taking no prisoners would mean it's aggressive, relentless, thorough, and apt is neither of these, it's a solid, professional tool, with some legacy baggage, but at least it's friendly and discoverable about it.

In the current thread, I'm only nit-picky about this, because OP said "Last time I tried `apt`, it would uninstall apps without cleaning after itself". To which to suggest that apt-purge does clean up after itself is incorrect. It does some additional cleaning-up, but it doesn't do a complete cleaning-up.

That being said, of all the package managers I tried, I still like apt the best. I feel like it's the most straightforward and user-friendly of all of them.

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