Jumping ship with Kubuntu

Although I've just been using Kubuntu for less than a week I am inclined to jump ship with it while it would be relatively painless to do so.

I have a few questions about the process.

Getting it up and running was a breeze.

I had just installed a brand new main SSD drive and partitioned it into two partitions.

First I installed Windows 10 in the bigger partition and then installed Kubuntu in the smaller one.

Conveniently, on its own, Kubuntu set up a boot menu with seven or more choices.

At the top was booting into Kubuntu and six or seven choices down was booting into Windows.

What would be the recommended way of removing Kubuntu?

Formatting the partition?

What would happen to its boot menu when removing it?

Agreed with Cryptodan. I would also suggest clearing out the Ubuntu or Kubuntu folder in the ESP and delete the extra EFI boot entries. As an aside, is the main reason you are switching over due to many options during Boot?

Thanks Dan and Chiragroop.

Could you please explain how to clear out the Kubuntu folder in the ESP?

And also how to delete the extra EFI boot entries?

Actually I appreciate all the boot options, even though the only ones I have time to read are the Kubuntu and Windows boot options. 

The menu times out quickly before I can read any of the other ones.

The main reasons I will probably switch to another distro are because I'm not crazy about the overall look/feel of Kubuntu, I don't like the way
it is handling one of the most basic functions (shutting down), the hoops I'm still having to go through to remove all password requirements

and the constant upgrade notices. These things might seem trivial but I don't experience any of them in Windows.

 

Since this applies only to UEFI systems, you want to check if you have a UEFI system. On any Linux live USB you are running to install, run this:

sudo dmesg | grep -i efivars

You should get an output something like this:

[    0.301784] Registered efivars operations

 
If that's the case, then you can proceed. First we will remove Kubuntu from boot order. Run this to see UEFI boot order:

sudo efibootmgr

This is potentially the output you could get.



As you can see, there's Ubuntu in the boot order in my case. Find the bootorder number beside it (0006 in my case) and then run this command:

sudo efibootmgr -B -b {bootorder}

Replace the {bootorder} with your bootorder you found earlier. In my case, it would be sudo efibootmgr -B -b 0006
 
This should remove Ubuntu (which is what Kubuntu installs itself as) from the UEFI boot order.
 
Now, for removing its files from the ESP depends on your distro. For KDE based distros, open the KDE Partition assistant. Identify the ESP partition. If it already has a mount point, use that. In my case, the live USB didn't mount it.

In that case, identify the location of partition (mine is /dev/sda1), run these commands in the terminal/Konsole (and replace /dev/sda1 with whatever your partition path is):

mkdir ~/Desktop/efi
sudo mount /dev/sda1 ~/Desktop/efi

Now you can browse the ESP. Open the efi folder on your Desktop. Inside, you will find another folder called EFI. Open that, and you will find the Ubuntu folder. Delete that folder (and empty the trash). If it doesn't let you, right-click and click Open in Terminal or Open Terminal here and run this command:

sudo rm -r ./ubuntu

That's it!
 
 
Now, if you are using a GNOME based distro, this is slightly different. Open Disks and identify the ESP partition.

As you can see, it lists the partition as EFI system. You can click the triangle to mount it if it isn't mounted already and click the mount location. Find the EFI/ubuntu folder and delete it and if it doesn't work, run the command after opening terminal in that folder.

Since this applies only to UEFI systems, you want to check if you have a UEFI system. On any Linux live USB you are running to install, run this:

sudo dmesg | grep -i efivars

You should get an output something like this:

[    0.301784] Registered efivars operations

 
If that's the case, then you can proceed. First we will remove Kubuntu from boot order. Run this to see UEFI boot order:

sudo efibootmgr

This is potentially the output you could get.



As you can see, there's Ubuntu in the boot order in my case. Find the bootorder number beside it (0006 in my case) and then run this command:

sudo efibootmgr -B -b {bootorder}

Replace the {bootorder} with your bootorder you found earlier. In my case, it would be sudo efibootmgr -B -b 0006
 
This should remove Ubuntu (which is what Kubuntu installs itself as) from the UEFI boot order.
 
Now, for removing its files from the ESP depends on your distro. For KDE based distros, open the KDE Partition assistant. Identify the ESP partition. If it already has a mount point, use that. In my case, the live USB didn't mount it.

In that case, identify the location of partition (mine is /dev/sda1), run these commands in the terminal/Konsole (and replace /dev/sda1 with whatever your partition path is):

mkdir ~/Desktop/efi
sudo mount /dev/sda1 ~/Desktop/efi

Now you can browse the ESP. Open the efi folder on your Desktop. Inside, you will find another folder called EFI. Open that, and you will find the Ubuntu folder. Delete that folder (and empty the trash). If it doesn't let you, right-click and click Open in Terminal or Open Terminal here and run this command:

sudo rm -r ./ubuntu

That's it!
 
 
Now, if you are using a GNOME based distro, this is slightly different. Open Disks and identify the ESP partition.

 

As you can see, it lists the partition as EFI system. You can click the triangle to mount it if it isn't mounted already and click the mount location. Find the EFI/ubuntu folder and delete it and if it doesn't work, run the command after opening terminal in that folder.

Thanks Chira.

I have saved these instructions to use if I go ahead with a new distro installation.