Is the evolution package safe to delete?

Issues related to applications and software problems
Post Reply
DaveHighland
Posts: 20
Joined: 2016/04/06 20:08:05

Is the evolution package safe to delete?

Post by DaveHighland » 2018/06/26 20:19:09

While perusing the system monitor's list of processes, trying to find what was slowing down my desktop computer, I noticed the following processes were running:

evolution-addressbook-factory
evolution-addressbook-factory-subprocess
evolution-alarm-notify
evolution-calendar-factory
evolution-calendar-factory-subprocess
evolution-source-registry

I believe these are all provided by the evolution package, and since I use Mozilla Thunderbird exclusively for my e-mail, calendar, and contacts, is it safe to delete the evolution package, or will that break Gnome?

The fact that these processes are started automatically at boot gives me an uneasy feeling about just ham-handedly executing "sudo yum remove evolution"

lightman47
Posts: 1521
Joined: 2014/05/21 20:16:00
Location: Central New York, USA

Re: Is the evolution package safe to delete?

Post by lightman47 » 2018/06/27 19:26:07

You'd tend to think so, but not so much. It has dependencies that will remove a lot of system files; this is exactly WHY you never use the "-y" switch for yum package removal - it will likely do a lot of damage. You need to see the list of what it's going to remove, then get appropriately nervous and cancel.

Unlike Windows which incremented/decremented a "counter" for dependencies to tell when no program was using it any more, Linux (or maybe yum) will blindly remove one - regardless how many other programs are also using it. Having trashed one system doing exactly what you asked, I learned to use rpm to remove a package with the --nodeps switch. I understand that is also ill advised, but ...

Thus far, that's the only linux failing I've encountered in a decade or two.

desertcat
Posts: 843
Joined: 2014/08/07 02:17:29
Location: Tucson, AZ

Re: Is the evolution package safe to delete?

Post by desertcat » 2018/07/06 09:32:53

DaveHighland wrote:
2018/06/26 20:19:09
While perusing the system monitor's list of processes, trying to find what was slowing down my desktop computer, I noticed the following processes were running:

evolution-addressbook-factory
evolution-addressbook-factory-subprocess
evolution-alarm-notify
evolution-calendar-factory
evolution-calendar-factory-subprocess
evolution-source-registry

I believe these are all provided by the evolution package, and since I use Mozilla Thunderbird exclusively for my e-mail, calendar, and contacts, is it safe to delete the evolution package, or will that break Gnome?

The fact that these processes are started automatically at boot gives me an uneasy feeling about just ham-handedly executing "sudo yum remove evolution"
More likely than not this is a 'service' and as such can be turned off. You don't need to delete the packages, which might break something so simply just turn off the service so that it does not start.

Post Reply