William Morder wrote:
Although, yes, I probably have too much installed, I do this because I test a lot of different software, then strip down to what I want. For example, I try out all the different media players, but I don't keep them all.
when you test something you do not do it on your production system. you do it on a test system. In real life we use many test systems to bring a software to production. When it is on production - there is one rule: never touch a running/production system!
So just get a test system and do the testing there. Install and change on production only what you understand and really need.
Keep a clean image(backup) for the test system is also a good idea, so that you do not have to install from scratch
regards