purge-old-kernels deprecated

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 2023-01-08 at 17:19 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Jan 2023 at 16:28, Bo Berglund <bo.berglund at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Could you explain what apt purge does?
> 
> I attempted to answer that already.
> 
> "apt purge $package" uninstalls a program and deletes its global
> configuration files.

Hi,

if somebody should google "purge" and get a link to this thread, it
might be important to explain it a little bit more.

The option "purge" doesn't remove anything from users $HOME directories.
It does remove configurations outside of users $HOME. Sometimes changes
are made to configurations that are usually located in /etc, such
changes require root privileges. Changes could also happen to other non-
user, aka "global" directories/files, that require root privileges for
editing, too, such as /usr/share/. In other words, if something was
installed by a package, this is done always outside of a user's home
directory. All changes outside a user's home directory are kept, when
uninstalling a package, only files that were not changed get deleted.
When running an application for the very first time usually a
configuration is generated in a user's home directory, "purge" doesn't
remove such a configuration.

A "normal" uninstall removes only unchanged files outside of user's
home, while changed files outside of a user's home are kept, but "purge"
removes also files that are outside of user's home + where edited, in
other words that differ from the package's installed files.

Disclaimer, English isn't my native language and I'm a little bit tipsy
at the moment. My apologies!

Regards,
Ralf