Remove recommended packages

Solution 1:

In addition to enzotibs answer, if you wish to avoid adding --no-install-recommends each time, you can also disable automatic installation of recommended package by setting the APT::Install-Recommends setting to 0:

umask 0022;echo 'APT::Install-Recommends "0";' | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00DisableInstallRecommends

The umask 0022 causes the file to be created with permissions 644, restrictive permissions breaks operations like apt-get -s ... (simulate).

Solution 2:

I think the sequence

sudo apt-get purge $packages
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install $packages

is the way to go.