I'm not new to linux but I'm not a guru either. so I was wondering, how exactly does a chroot work?

Having read a little about it I was under the impression that it was a new separate root directory where i can do almost anything without really affecting the other.

After installing kile in easy debian and finding out it didn't work I decided to uninstall easy debian and delete the image so that I can start fresh and try again.
once I had reinstalled easy debian and a new image I realized it still had some things from the old easy debian install like kile, my themes, etc.

clearly it seems I don't know what I'm doing, why have these things stayed after deleting the image? I always thought what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas but that doesn't seem to be the case.
so how exactly does a chroot work, where has it stored kile, my themes, etc for them not to be deleted when I delete the image?

isn't only the applications etc run at chroot?

To completly remove Easy Debian you need to remove the /.debian/ forlder too.

The chroot will give you a "new" root system.. that your user can use. So i think it will save conf-files to your user too.. but me to am not an expert. So i am not 100% sure.

I'm not sure. if it is, that would make sense in my case.

@AlMehdi
Looks like that's the case. Which means it's harder to maintain than I initially thought.

You can find out about chroot at wikipedia

In your case the solution is to remove the ./PROGRAM_NAME (e.g. ./kile) from your home-directory (/home/user/)

The reason is, that easy-debian uses the same home-directory as Maemo does, so every user-specific config-file is written in the home directory and will not be affected by deleting the debian-img

It's a way of switching what you use as a root file system. For example, you could create a directory called /home/cheese and use that as the root file system. The caveat is that you'll need a fair few files for the OS to keep on running - such as libraries, bin files and so forth.
Generally chroot is used for daemons to improve security in case the daemon is compromised - such as an ftp daemon. This way, if the hacker can use a flaw to get access to the OS, they're stuck in the chrooted filesystem, and can't access 'real' files and directories.

Another use of chroot would be to rescue a system that won't boot by booting from a rescue CD and then chrooting to the server's filesystem so that you can fix the problems.

Outside of these scenarios, there's not that much practical use for chroot.

im chrooted