# How to uninstall Paraview while it is "not installed" on Ubuntu?
**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [June 6, 2021, 12:58am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364 "2021-06-06T00:58:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Aeschylus\_Ye](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Aeschylus_Ye)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2021, 12:58am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364/1 "2021-06-06T00:58:11Z")
I can turn on the Paraview through terminal on my Ubuntu, like
xxx$ paraview
However, I cannot uninstall it since “Package ‘paraview’ is not installed”, see below:
xxx$ sudo apt-get purge paraview
[sudo] password for XXX:
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Package ‘paraview’ is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Could anyone please help me solve this problem?
By the way, how to turn on the “PARAVIEW\_ENABLE\_PYTHON” term on my laptop?
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### Author:  [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2021, 2:07pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364/2 "2021-06-07T14:07:58Z")
Where is `paraview` coming from? `which paraview` should show this. Not every program that can be executed is necessarily installed via `apt`.
> [@Aeschylus\_Ye](#):
>
> By the way, how to turn on the “PARAVIEW\_ENABLE\_PYTHON” term on my laptop?
That is a build option; there’s nothing you can do to to change it once ParaView is already built.
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### Author:  [@Aeschylus\_Ye](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Aeschylus_Ye)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2021, 3:09pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364/3 "2021-06-07T15:09:32Z")
Hi Ben, here is the message:
XXX$ which paraview
/usr/local/bin/paraview
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### Author:  [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2021, 3:28pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364/4 "2021-06-07T15:28:39Z")
That is not an `apt` maintained ParaView installation. You’ll have to find how it was installed first. Once you have that, we can look at how to potentially uninstall it.
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### Author:  [@Aeschylus\_Ye](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Aeschylus_Ye)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2021, 3:32pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364/5 "2021-06-07T15:32:25Z")
Hi Ben, I installed Paraview on my Ubuntu following the instructions on the webpage as follows:
[https://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView:Build\_And\_Install](https://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView:Build_And_Install)
Unfortunately, I forget in which way I installed and built Paraview.
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### Author:  [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2021, 5:24pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364/6 "2021-06-07T17:24:20Z")
Hrm. The wiki really needs to be replaced with more up-to-date docs 😕 . Alas, without that, you’ll probably need to go and excise things manually. If ParaView is the only thing in `/usr/local`, you can probably just remove most of the files there. If not, the key things to look for are directories with `paraview` in the name and libraries with `-pv` in them.
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### Author:  [@aron.helser](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/aron.helser)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2021, 9:54pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364/7 "2021-06-07T21:54:12Z")
The very first line of that wiki is : **This page has been replaced by build documentation in the [paraview repository](https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview/blob/master/Documentation/dev/build.md).**
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### Author:  [@Aeschylus\_Ye](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Aeschylus_Ye)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2021, 9:56pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364/8 "2021-06-07T21:56:59Z")
Thanks for your reply, but how can I remove the installed one from my Ubuntu now?
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### Author:  [@aron.helser](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/aron.helser)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2021, 11:48am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364/9 "2021-06-08T11:48:36Z")
I will give you explicit instructions:
- Run the paraview you have, find it’s version using the Help … About dialog.
- download that version from [https://www.paraview.org/download/](https://www.paraview.org/download/)
- extract that archive, and look at the files inside - they are grouped into directories, `bin`, `lib`, `share`, etc
- look for equivalent files in `/usr/local`, and delete them
- if you get permission errors, use `sudo rm` to delete them
Hopefully this helps,
Aron
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### Author:  [@Aeschylus\_Ye](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Aeschylus_Ye)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2021, 11:51am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/how-to-uninstall-paraview-while-it-is-not-installed-on-ubuntu/7364/10 "2021-06-08T11:51:15Z")
Thanks Aron, I will have a try. Regards!