Uninstall Preinstalled Apps?

[OffWorld]

What is the best/safest way to get rid of preinstalled apps on a rooted tablet?

My tablet came with some preinstalled apps for the Asian market that are of no use to me so I'd like to uninstall or delete them. They don't appear in Settings>Manage Applications so I'd have to do it from a command line or within a file manager running with superuser privileges. I'd assume since .apk files are essentially sandboxed, and these apps are NOT necessary system files, I should be able to just delete them.

But I was wondering if there's a "startup apps" config somewhere I'd need to edit first if these things are getting launched in the background at startup? I'd hate to delete them and then have my tablet endlessly rebooting or hanging because it's looking for some startup app that is no longer there!

 

[zerotiger]

There are a few options. Easiest is to use an app. For some this will be the safest way too. There are a few free apps out there that do it, but i think Root Explorer is easier and more reliable. It will set you back a few bucks, but is worth it if you aren't comfortable in the command prompt.

If you have the Android SDK and want to run through it manually:
open up your command prompt then type in each line followed by the enter key
cd\
cd androidsdk\tools
adb shell
su
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/app

This will get you into the folder where the bloatware is located. Type in
ls
This will return a list of files in the directory.
To remove one of them
rm filename.apk

if you are running Android 1.5 or earlier you may have to remove the .odex file too. I can't recall. If so
rm filename.odex

If you make a typo it probably will not have a devastating effect it will probably just return that it can't find the command or file. That makes it pretty safe to do it this way.
I would highly recommend you first back up everything, especially the apps you are about to delete. Some apps are critical to the operation of your device.