<i>Install things through the package manager when possible. This makes it easier to uninstall the software cleanly.</i><p>Of course one uses the system package manager when possible, and a specialized package manager like <i>npm</i> in most other cases, but not all is lost when one needs a recent version of some <i>autotools</i> monstrosity. In that case just install it using GNU <i>stow</i>. Then uninstalling is just an invocation of &quot;<i>stow -D</i>&quot; (plus deleting a single directory).<p>But that only makes sense for a box one physically possesses. Why on earth would one reuse a VPS? Nevertheless, I&#x27;m glad that TFA did, because the investigation was very interesting.