Many of us have used the
./configure
make
sudo make install
Method in order to install a package.
This is fine and dandy - except if you decide to remove the package, APT or Synaptic often will not find it.
It is up to the package maintainer to include an "uninstall" file which will allow you to run
sudo make uninstall
to remove the package. For many, the above command should work and remove the package. But not all maintainers include that - so what to do if they did not:
Open a terminal in the source directory that you ran make
sudo make install
from.
Run
sudo checkinstall
The terminal will give a series of prompts. This may elevate your blood pressure, but don't worry. It's very easy. It wants to know a description - you can put whatever description you want here. Tap the enter key twice in order to create the empty line it asks for.
You won't need to change any values, so hitting the enter
key when it prompts on that field (It suggests just hitting Enter Key) is all you need.
It also prompts you that you probably should say yes or no - just follow the terminal suggestions.
What this does is it creates the install as a .deb file - this way APT or Synaptic can find it.
Once installed in this manner - you can now run
sudo apt remove --purge (package-name)
to remove it.
You can run the sudo checkinstall
at any time in order to remove the package, so even if you installed it last year, you can use this method to safely remove it.