Audacity Forum

removed .audacity folders

reinstalled program , runs now!

thanks for help
dan

I'll mark this as solved.

For information:
"sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove" will remove the application and configuration / data files of the package, and dependencies that apt thinks are no longer required.
The "purge" option does not remove user files created by the application. User preferences that are saved by an application are not "files of that package" - those files were not installed by apt and apt does not know about them. It is normal for preference files to remain after uninstalling - typically within a hidden "dot" file or folder in the user's home directory. These files are typically small and can be useful if you want to reinstall the application at a later date.

In this case, the problem was in one of Audacity's user configuration files (probably in audacity.cfg), which by default is in ~/.audacity-data

Note that the "--auto-remove" option is risky. If you have any applications that were not installed with apt but by some other means, apt will not be aware of its dependencies, so this option could remove packages that are still required. This shouldn't be a problem if you only install applications from the distribution repositories and use apt or an apt front end (such as Synaptic), but best to always check exactly what is being removed before allowing this option to run.