Tutorial: Remove a PPA in Ubuntu (and restore original packages)

Let’s face it, we love to test new applications, improve our system and see new things…

However in some occasion, after we’ve updated our system by adding a PPA in our Ubuntu (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:NAME_OF_THE_PPA) you discover that you are not interested in what you’ve just installed, it doesn’t work as expected or simply you want to remove it…

When you install a PPA you don’t only add the software you want to install as normally you’ll have all the required dependencies (that in some cases are in a newer version than the ones installed in your system). Therefore, when uninstalling a software that you’ve got from a PPA, you should care of removing all the extra packages and re-instate the original versions of the ones you had before.

Luckily, you don’t have to do this manually… Thank you ppa-purge!!!!

You can install ppa-purge by simply run in console:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

By running it you will be able to see its syntax:

sudo ppa-purge [options] <ppa:ppaowner>[/ppaname]

So, if for example you’ve previously installed a PPA called ppa:username/coolsoftware:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:username/coolsoftware


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