Removing "RC" packages on Debian/Ubuntu

If you do "dpkg -l", sometimes you will get to see a long list of packages with the following details:

• rc  package-name  0.4-3  package-details

Note the "rc" status at the beginning of the package description. Some packages will show up in the "dpkg -l" output even after removing them. The reason behind this is - packages with "rc" status indicate that the packages have been removed but some configuration files for those packages are left on the system.

To remove these packages, do the following:

• sudo dpkg --purge package-name

For a list of packages, run the following:

• dpkg -l | grep ^rc | cut -d ' ' -f3 | xargs sudo dpkg --purge