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I have noted that at least since 18.04 up to 19.10 the settings for automatically cleaning temporary files is not enabled by default.
Why is this?

I reckon that one reason might be to limit wear on SSDs, but if a temporary file is not touched for 30 days, I guess we can remove it, right?

Update
I'd like to note that I have purposefully omitted the subject of the trash. That is for two reasons:

  1. The trash bin makes a visual statement that there is something in it.
  2. The files in the trash bin have actively been placed there by the user, contrary to the temporary files, of which many users are completely unaware.
beruic
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    "cleaning temporary files is not enabled by default. Why is this?" I am afraid we users can't answer that. You would need to ask a developer of systemd or Canonical. systemctl enable systemd-tmpfiles && systemctl start systemd-tmpfiles && systemd-tempfilesis how to turn it on but was not the question ;-) – Rinzwind Dec 19 '19 at 11:52
  • @Rinzwind you can also just open settings, got to privacy and edit it there. (I am sorry if the app and menu name is wrong. My system is Danish :) – beruic Dec 19 '19 at 11:58
  • this is quite a subjective question. It would seem the developers are damned if they do and equally if they don't. I somewhat favour the option to make a choice on whether to clean or not and after what period of time. – graham Dec 19 '19 at 12:12
  • @Graham But you do have that in either case. I am just asking why it is not enabled by default, with a sensible value, like e.g. 30 days. – beruic Dec 19 '19 at 13:08
  • You are talking about a system that is running for a long time without [re]boots, an Ubuntu server? I think it is a good idea to turn off a desktop system at least once a week, and then, when booted again, /tmp will be refreshed. – sudodus Dec 19 '19 at 13:29
  • @sudodus Well, in this case I am talking about desktop, and that thing with the reboot was actually my expectation too. I thought /tmp was a tmpfs by default, but I cannot seem to find any mention of this in my current 19.10 system or my wifes 18.04. I know some users (my wife for instance) just suspends their machine when not in use, so in that case i think it might be beneficial. – beruic Dec 19 '19 at 14:10
  • I run 18.04.x LTS. /tmp is in the root partition. ls -ld /tmp shows drwxrwxrwt 16 root root 4096 dec 19 15:35 /tmp. Do you want to clean /tmp because it grows and occupies too much drive space? Or some other reason? See this link. – sudodus Dec 19 '19 at 14:54
  • Which temporary locations are you talking about? Can you be more specific? – FedKad Dec 19 '19 at 20:08
  • @FedonKadifeli mainly /tmp. Sorry I'm not very active. Got sick. – beruic Dec 20 '19 at 19:10

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