Can't fully un-install extra DE's

[Bucky Ball]

There is an old blog post from PsychoCat here that may help.

This:

Psychocats used to post command one liners to do this, but it has not been done for 13.10 and above. Do not try a line for a version different than that of your own. It might break your installation.

[kmdude344]

Well I've bought an external hard drive and im now going to just reinstall ubuntu. At the moment that seems like the only option.

[grumblebum2]

Would it not be possible to find the extra packages installed by using a live cd/usb.
Say you installed xubuntu-desktop but now wanted to completely uninstall.

Boot up a live cd/usb of your installed release and simulate an xubuntu-desktop install.

sudo apt-get --simulate install xubuntu-desktop

Copy from the terminal the list of new packages to be installed to somewhere you can access them.

Then boot into your installed desktop and run

sudo apt-get remove <list of packages>