Making my 12.04 distrubution like new

[jskallz]

I recently did a project involving a lot of messy installs. After manually undoing what evil I have done I realize I have broken a lot of dependencies and instead of manually slaving over each one, I'd like to 'go back in time', before I messed up my installation. How can I do this?

[aarons6]

first you have to be more specific on what DE you are using.
gnome
gnome shell
unity
kde
xfce
etc....
first id try this
sudo apt-get -f install

if that doesnt work
then you prob just can purge it and reinstall it.
sudo apt-get purge kde-desktop
sudo apt-get install kde-desktop

[ibjsb4]

I'd like to 'go back in time', before I messed up my installation. How can I do this?

You have to build a time machine :P

Some terminal commands that may help:


sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet/Howto#Maintenance_commands

Another thought: If you like to do a lot of playing around and don't want to bork your system, consider VirtualBox. There is a learning curve, but in the end you will have that "time machine" :)

https://www.virtualbox.org/