Deleting Crap necessary?

Question

In Windows there were many crap files that inflated the system (like temp, browser temp, update fragments, old update files and so on). So in Windows there were tools like CCleaner really needed.

What about Ubuntu? Are there such tools also needed? Or does Ubuntu delete such files automatically?

If such a cleaner is needed (or useful), what cleaner do you recommend?

Most cleaning up is done by CRON in a completely automated way. There are no cleaning tool that I know of. This being said, you could save space on your 2Tb drive by deleting a few things here and there... like /tmp and /var/cache// but you need to know exactly what can be deleted first! — Alexis Wilke, Oct 12 '13 at 19:51

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 12 '13 at 20:25

In the terminal run sudo apt-get autoclean

Entry in man apt-get for autoclean

autoclean
Like clean, autoclean clears out the local repository of retrieved
package files. The difference is that it only removes package files
that can no longer be downloaded, and are largely useless. This
allows a cache to be maintained over a long period without it
growing out of control. The configuration option
APT::Clean-Installed will prevent installed packages from being
erased if it is set to off.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 12 '13 at 20:29

1

You can use BleachBit, you can also find it on Software Center. It's really good, I use it for a year and I'm satisfied.

answered Oct 12 '13 at 20:29

Alen

1,803

4

BleachBit is an option, but use with care! I managed to crash my ubuntu system with it in the beginning. – v2r Oct 12 '13 at 20:44
Can you please provide some more information about "taking care"? I am a Ubuntu and Linux beginner, so more information would be very useful. – OLLI_S Oct 13 '13 at 10:02
@OLLI_S If you use BleachBit without sudo then you don't have to worry about, but if you use it with sudo just check the first group 'APT' and the rest leave unchecked. That way you will clean everything but using native Linux commands, that way you'll be safe – Alen Oct 13 '13 at 10:51

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 12 '13 at 20:30

As Alexis Wilke said, most of the cleaning is done automatically by the system, but a lot of programs do not clean after themselves and you may want to clean their crap (just for freeing space on your system).

You can do that with a little tool called bleachbit, you can install it in software-center, and run from the menu.

You can run is as normal user - when it cleans your files, or as root, then it cleans also system files and for other users.

Of course you can choose what to clean.

Deleting Crap necessary?

3 Answers3