I was reviewing the installed apps in Software with the idea of deleting unused apps to save disk space.
I noticed the following items installed on my PC. I don’t remember installing them and I never took an inventory when I first installed Zorin to know if they were there from the beginning or they were added later during software updates.
Long(er) answer: in Linux there are several package formats that you can choose from when installing software. There are pros and cons to each of them but the bottom line is that they work running in isolation from the rest of the system. To achieve that, they need to install additional "runtimes" or "frameworks" for each version of a particular program. In this particular case, it looks like what you're using is Flatpak package format which is one of the most popular ones.
This is all to say that if you have installed software using the Software Store, you probably don't want to delete them.
Virtual Machine Manager is a front-end for managing virtual machines. Typically you see it used in conjunction with something called KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machines) but it can be used with other types of hypervisors.
It's strange that you have it installed, since VirtualBox doesn't install it. But in any case, it should be safe to uninstall as these are different programs after all.
Thank you. This is one of the best answers I have ever received on any technical forum: clear, right to the point and with a link if I want to dive deep for more info ( and I will check out that link). You earned a gold star!
If you don't mind I would like to followup with this: Running Zorin 16.3 right now. I am preparing to upgrade to Zorin 17. If I do the “upgrade in place” will my installed applications remain untouched? Like most people I have added some apps that did not come with the original installation and uninstalled apps that I did not want or need. Will upgrading do anything to the new apps I installed or re-install the old apps I deleted?
About the upgrade... well, to tell the truth it's been kind of a hit and miss situation. It's a relatively new feature just introduced in this latest version of Zorin OS, and while there have been many improvements since its release, people still report issues every now and then.
I've only tested this on virtual machines myself and everything worked fine for me. But I've noticed that the more customized the system was before the upgrade, the more issues are encountered. This can be for various reasons that are hard to predict and are unique to each PC.
Personally, I always prefer to install from scratch. It's definitely more work, but it's also a great excuse to make sure you have proper backups of your personal files (which is something I always recommend), and do some cleanup of stuff you don't actually need.
You can always opt to install from scratch anyway, so try with the upgrade feature first and see if that works for you. It's been a while and there have been plenty of improvements so there's no reason to think it would fail. But in any case, make sure you have proper backups of your personal files, that's the one thing that you cannot easily replace if something goes wrong.
