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flalaw

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 11, 2006
165
1
United States
i was curious about gimp so i installed it and x11 just to play around w/ it. i really don't need gimp anymore so i want to delete them both. i'm not very familiar how this works though. from some googling i found that i can remove x11 by typing the following into the terminal:

sudo rm -rf /usr/X11R6
sudo rm -rf /etc/X11
sudo rm -rf /Applications/X11.app

now how do i remove gimp? just delete the gimp package in the applications folder? also, where exactly on my computer are the x11 files that i deleted using the commands i just posted above? i only X11 related thing i can find on my computer is just the app.
 

wrldwzrd89

macrumors G5
Jun 6, 2003
12,110
77
Solon, OH
i was curious about gimp so i installed it and x11 just to play around w/ it. i really don't need gimp anymore so i want to delete them both. i'm not very familiar how this works though. from some googling i found that i can remove x11 by typing the following into the terminal:

sudo rm -rf /usr/X11R6
sudo rm -rf /etc/X11
sudo rm -rf /Applications/X11.app

now how do i remove gimp? just delete the gimp package in the applications folder? also, where exactly on my computer are the x11 files that i deleted using the commands i just posted above? i only X11 related thing i can find on my computer is just the app.
The stuff in /usr and /etc are in hidden UNIX directories that you generally don't need to worry about, unless you installed some command-line program or anything that uses X11. Gimp installs several libraries it needs in order to run. Usually, these can be found in a subdirectory of /usr/local (another hidden UNIX directory).
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
I have to suppress the laughter a minute, but....

First of all, those command lines show you exactly where the X11 items are. /etc and /usr are standard elements in the Unix directory structure that port over to OS X. They're hidden in Finder normally because users who don't understand Unix shell commands usually have no need of messing with them. However, they're at the root level of the boot drive -- in the same place as the Users folder and the Applications folder. If you want to see inside them, you can do one of two things in terminal:

1)

cd /usr
ls -la

cd /etc
ls -la

2)

open /usr
open /etc

The latter set of open commands will override the usual Finder behavior of hiding these folders and make them temporarily visible in Finder (they still won't be visible in the Finder root directory, but they pop up in windows and you can poke around a little, if you'd like).

Do NOT indiscriminately delete things in here.

As for GIMP, if you're using the gimp.app distribution (the one that has a gimp application icon in the Applications folder, as opposed to the Fink one), then all you really have to do is trash the app file. There are a few kilobytes of support files (possibly a plist file in ~/library/preferences and probably a folder called ~/library/application support/gimp, although it's been a while since I had GIMP on my computer). These files are VERY SMALL (few kb) and do not interfere with system performance, slow the computer down, or anything of the like, though, so you really don't do much by deleting them, but you can go hunting for them if you want.
 
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