Cleaning Up Ubuntu
This is just a quick look at cleaning up an Ubuntu system. This is all documented elsewhere by an abundance of people, some of whom I no doubt took this off in the past and have forgotten where now (If you’re that person, then thanks very much, this stff has been coming in handy for me for a few years now).
Removing Residual Configs
The first step is to remove all of the residual configs lying about your system. These are configs which, as the name suggests, have been left behind by removed programs. To do so the we need to open Synaptic. You can find that in the System menu:
System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager
Once we are in Synaptic we can click on the status button down the bottom left. This will separate your packages into sections based on their status. The one we are looking for will have the words “residual config” in the name. Select all these packages and right click on them. In the menu that appears choose “Mark For Complete Removal“. You can then click “Apply” at the top of the screen.
That’s it. You have now removed all your residual configs.
Removing Partial Packages
You will need to open a terminal for this one. To do so hold down “Alt+F2“. A box should appear, into which you can type “gnome-terminal” to open a new terminal. In the terminal you simply need to type the following to remove these partial packages:
sudo apt-get autoclean
Once you’ve put in your password etc that’s it. All gone.
Removing Unnecessary Locale Data
Theres a nice little app called localepurge that will get rid of all the locale data that you don’t need. This can amount to quite a substantial amount of space. The first step is to install localepurge. In your terminal type:
sudo apt-get install localepurge
After installing localepurge will require that you configure it with the locale’s you want to keep. It will present you with a list of abbreviations from which you can choose. Scroll down to the one that suits you best (i.e. for myself I kept en_IE.
That’s it. It will run automatically after each install and remove unnecessary locale data.
Removing Orphaned Packages
The app deborphan can grab all your orphaned packages and be used to remove them (be a bit careful with this one as sometimes it can remove something you need – it hasn’t happened to myself but I have heard of it happening). So to install the package, in your terminal type:
sudo apt-get install deborphan
To run the app you just need to type this at your terminal:
deborphan | xargs sudo apt-get -y remove --purge
This will remove all the orphaned packages on your system.
That’s it then, you should have free’d up a good bit of space on your system now and it should be a little tidyer than before!