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I wonder if updating my system as suggested by the update manager consumes extra space?

Because even after installing all software I would like to use, I had about 10 GB free space. Now, without my knowledge, I have only 6GB free space.

Do I need to keep clearing temp folder contents like we do in Windows? If I need to delete, how do I do so? Any suggestions?

learner
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5 Answers5

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When you have done update , the cache files will stay remain here.you need to clear them.

from Terminal with CTRL+ALT+T you can clean it with

sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean

If you love the GUI then there is a evergreen application named bleachbit

you can install it with sudo apt-get install bleachbit .

you can clear more space by clearing the old kernels which you can do it easily from the Synaptic package manager.

enter image description here

There remove the old kernels , not the current one. For better purpose stay with two old recent kernels and clear remaining all of them.That can give you more free space.

Hope that helps.

Raja G
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  • +1 That is an excellent advice! The kernel images – Lucio Feb 24 '13 at 03:07
  • Thank you all frnds. @Jai the command sudo apt-get autoremove helped in cleaning so many MB's. But I want to know one thing... Are you people telling that if I update 100 MB of data it will consume 100 MB space ? Or most of it will be replaced and around 20% of data will be added to my system... – learner Feb 25 '13 at 18:54
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    That's we can't conclude. How much memory will be used depends upon new changes. – Raja G Feb 26 '13 at 01:15
  • @learner you are welcome my dear friend. – Raja G Feb 26 '13 at 08:44
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There will be some ebb and flow of hard drive space through updates. There could be some unneeded packages and old kernel left behind. I would recommend a

sudo apt-get autoremove

This will do some basic clean up.

Mordoc
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The update by it self will reduce your free space on the disk almost always, because it is adding new packages/code/information to your system.

Also, the update system save the progress of the download of an update so if this is interrupted, you can return it from there.

To remove this cache files you can use the apt-get command with the following options:

  • clean to delete it
  • autoclean to do it automatically or
  • autoremove to remove unnecessary packages

For more information enter man apt-get or see the online man apt-get document

Lucio
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If you want, you can run these three commands together,

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove

The first one resynchronizes the package index files from their sources. The second one in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages. apt-get has a smart conflict resolution system, and it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the expense of less important ones if necessary. And finally, the third one removes packages that were automatically installed to satisfy dependencies for other packages and are now no longer needed.

Actually, I have put the three commands together under one alias. See below,

alias updatedistupgrade='sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade; sudo apt-get autoremove'

All I do is to run updatedistupgrade from time to time. So, in my system, the unnecessary files are never there.

Please execute 

man apt-get

to get more information.

Masroor
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  • What did you do here, did you combined three terminal commands together in a single line? How did you do it? Can you elaborate and provide some materials to learn it? – sigdelsanjog May 14 '15 at 04:38
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    @algosig This (http://linuxcommand.org/writing_shell_scripts.php) will teach you writing shell scripts. This (http://askubuntu.com/questions/17536/how-do-i-create-a-permanent-bash-alias) will give you a fairly good idea on how to define aliases. You can put the three commands in a shell script and execute it. Or, you can define an alias which will represent the three commands. The alias approach can be found in my answer (http://askubuntu.com/a/260550/82650). – Masroor May 14 '15 at 13:41
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I am using Ubuntu Tweak which has very useful Janitor submenu. It let's you check which installation packages/old kernels could be removed. Nice and easy, no need to remeber these command line verses. And some of those packages really eat up disk space...

There are probably more applications that do the same.

Robert Jakubowski
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