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What do you recommend an average home or office user (provided they also have root access to the machine they're using) do on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis or so to keep their system clean, fast, up-to-date, secure, slim, etc.?

I'm looking for things like

apt-get update; apt-get upgrade

or purging of old kernels and so on.

thymaro
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    The great thing about Linux is that it doesn't tend to slow down over time as Windows does – You'reAGitForNotUsingGit May 30 '17 at 15:37
  • 'Getting rid of old kernels' is already automatic in 16.04 and newer, unless you have deactivated the feature. – user535733 May 30 '17 at 15:40
  • @user535733 you sure? it's not in mines ... – Ravexina May 30 '17 at 15:40
  • @Ravexina you have likely either deactivated unattended-upgrade, or you have otherwise made kernel packages ineligible for autoremoval. Could be a change apt-marking, could be a dependency, could be a couple possibilities. But for most users (including all my test systems), kernel autoremoval works properly. I'll happily triage the bug for 'my kernels won't autoremove' if anyone can explain how to duplicate it. – user535733 May 30 '17 at 15:44
  • @user535733 I have to test it in full desktop installations, cause most of my systems are installed via network installer and they don't come with unattended-upgrade at all. – Ravexina May 30 '17 at 15:46
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    @Ravexina not having u-u installed at all would certainly block automatic autoremoval! – user535733 May 30 '17 at 15:50
  • This type of question really depends on each individual user's purpose. Things that average user does regularly are different from what a system administrator might do, and what software developer might do. Too broad of a question – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy May 30 '17 at 17:01

1 Answers1

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If you want to do these stuff manually just like I do:

Always keep your sources up to date using:

sudo apt-get update

use sudo apt-get upgrade regularly to upgrade all packages to newer versions, get security updates and patches.

use:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

to get install new kernel, it might remove or install new packages if it was necessary.

time to time use: 

sudo apt-get autoclean

to clear your apt cache, it removes old deb files which are not necessary anymore.

and run:

sudo apt-get autoremove

to remove old kernels or packages that are not necessary anymore like dependencies which are not being used anymore.

that's what I do.

If you use apt instead of apt-get then by running apt upgrade you get all packages updates also new kernel and you don't even have to run apt autoclean cause it's not going to cache deb files.

You should also have backup from your system's important paths:

/etc
/var
/home

are the places which I always keep a backup of them.

Ravexina
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