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So, just few days ago I installed debian to a laptop. During setup I chose GNOME as desktop environment but I later came to the conclusion that I didn't really want a desktop. So I tried to uninstall it. I ran sudo tasksel, unchecked "Desktop Environment: GNOME" and selected OK. It did something... Can't remember the output but it was not obvious. After that sudo and reboot were not recognized as valid commands anymore. I could reboot by executing /sbin/reboot as root though. After that, I was still greeted by GNOME and sudo and reboot were still broken. tasksel showed no desktop selected.

Long story short: It failed uninstalling GNOME and messed up my system. I don't know what it all messed up so I consider just completely reinstalling debian again.

But I really want to understand what I did wrong. Whenever I touch Linux I mess it up pretty quick :/

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    The fact that Gnome was not uninstalled afterwards means that, well it wasn't uninstalled. That might be because the uninstallation had a problem; or it might be because you have other software manually installed depending on Gnome, so it couldn't be uninstalled.
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Jul 30, 2024 at 20:05
  • Add the output of which sudo to your question.
    – eyoung100
    Commented Jul 30, 2024 at 21:27
  • @eyoung100 it's none. no output. same for reboot. for which su it's /usr/bin/su. Also $PATH is fine (/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games)
    – xsrf
    Commented Jul 30, 2024 at 21:54
  • What happens with su - && apt install sudo? Looks like we have to rebuild what you took out then properly remove the Desktop Environment.
    – eyoung100
    Commented Jul 30, 2024 at 22:00
  • great, I installed sudo again and it works. reboot can still not be found. The point of my question is - what when wrong in general? I didn't do anything besides unselecting GNOME. I didn't install and uninstall a ton of packages in between. The system was installed just a few days ago. I really only installed docker.
    – xsrf
    Commented Jul 30, 2024 at 22:11

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