Cleaning Linux from garbage. The five best utilities to clean up the file system in Linux

Linux is a wonderful operating system. But it also needs care, cleaning, cleaning, since it also gradually accumulates unnecessary garbage in the form of old packages, no longer needed configuration files, temporary files, and so on. There are many special utilities for Windows, for example, the well-known ccleaner.

The program cleans Windows well from everything unnecessary, I myself have used it more than once. Is there something similar for Linux? about all the unnecessary stuff?

1. How to clean Linux with Bleachbit?

The first thing to start with is to install the right software that brings everything together. This is the Bleachbit program.

Sudo apt-get install bleachbit

The menu contains system utilities, the bleachbit program will appear, or rather even two shortcuts. One can be run under regular users, the second with administrator rights. It is clear that in the second case, you can clean much more than in the first. Run bleachbit (root):

What do we see?

autoclean: for removes only "defective" packages from the cache.

autoremove: removes not removed dependencies from already removed packages.

clean: this is when you need to free up as much space as possible and delete the entire cache.

Bash: Delete command history. These are trifles, and it is generally not clear why you need it - if only you want to hide the commands that you typed.

Now just check the boxes next to the items that you want to clean. After that we press the "Clear" button. That's all, it is very easy to clean Linux in this way! But there are other ways too.

3. How do I clean up Linux with Mundus?

But garbage accumulates not only in system files, but also in the home directory. We install programs, then uninstall them, but the settings files from these programs remain in the home directory. How do I clean up this junk from the system?

For this, there is also a special program called Mundus, which can be downloaded from the developers website - launchpad.net/mundus. Download the .deb or .rpm package and install it as usual. At the output, we get the following program:

After starting the program, it immediately starts scanning the home folder, after which it gives out all the configuration files.

After that, you can manually clean unnecessary configs using the "Clean" button. I myself have just started using this program, so I have not yet learned the subtleties, but I think there is nothing complicated.

There are undoubtedly other programs and ways to clean up Linux, but these two programs are generally enough. If you know more ways to clean Linux, please write in the comments.

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11 comments

11 comments on the article "How to clean Linux?"

good utility -replaces cd / var / cache / apt / archives and then sudo rm * .deb-click less on the keyboard))) interesting, but there are ways to find out (except for direct viewing) which configs in / home are no longer needed -t. e "tails" of remote applications, and in general, where else do "tails" remain after uninstallations?

I have not met such. And is she really needed? We deleted the program, your individual settings remained in it. And then they decided to put it on again - and oops, everything was set up right away. And in general, it's probably easy to remove it manually. And this does not affect performance, not to mention the free space.

Although if I write a meeting here.

I found a program that can clean up the home folder, and finished the article.

Ubuntu Tweak does not clear thumbnail cache in ubuntu 14-04. Everything was fine in ubuntu 12-04.

Yes, the program generally deteriorated, the first versions were wonderful, and then somehow everything went wrong, I personally stopped using it.

Thank you, I will insert a phrase into the article that you need to proceed CAUTION!

Original: The five best Linux file system cleaning tools
Author: Jack Wallen
Publication date: January 11, 2012
Translation: A. Krivoshey
Date of transfer: February 2012

Everyone has heard about utilities for cleaning the system in Windows, but few people know that there are similar programs for Linux. Believe it or not, they exist, and today I want to present them to your attention. Some you have probably heard of, and their functionality will not be news to you. Each of the utilities below will help you keep your Linux filesystem in order.

1. Synaptic

This functionality is available in Synaptic (in fact, it is built into apt and many other package managers) - it allows you to get rid of unnecessary configuration files. They usually remain after packages are removed. This feature is very easy to use. Just click the "status" button in the lower left corner of the program window. Next, in the list that appears at the top of the left pane, select "Not installed (configuration files remain)". Now just mark the config files you want to remove and click "Apply". Everything is very simple.

2. BleachBit

It is a handy utility to free up disk space and improve system security. It has versions for Linux and Windows. BleachBit clears various caches, deletes cookies, cleans up your browsing history, temporary files, logs, and removes other garbage that you probably didn't know about, but which is present on every system. BleachBit has a wonderful graphical interface that makes it easy to select what you want to remove. Instead of choosing files or file types, you choose applications or system lists displayed in a tree structure. In addition, you can specify the drives or directories that the program will work with, and even see an overview of what it will do, before these actions are applied to your system. BleachBit is much more powerful than most other utilities and should be used with caution.

3. GtkOrphan

GtkOrphan makes it easy to remove unwanted packages from Debian systems. By default, GtkOrphan is not installed, so first you need to install it (from Synaptic or from the command line). GtkOrphan is a GUI for deborphan and it scans and removes unnecessary libraries from the system. Depending on how many of them are in your system, this can free up a lot of disk space. As with any application that removes libraries, it must be used with care so as not to remove anything necessary for the system or programs to work.

4. Cruft

Cruft is a command line utility that scans your system and removes anything that shouldn't be there. It collects most of the results from the dpkg database, as well as a list of "extra files" that are created over the lifetime of various programs on the system, and removes them. The program has a fairly large number of options, including:
-d - search only on specified disks;
-chroots - do not check the validity of symbolic links in the specified directories;
-ignore - ignore the specified directories;
-r - create a file with a report

5. Gconf-Cleaner

Gconf-Cleaner is a utility that can be compared to programs for cleaning the registry in Windows. It scans the Gconf database (Gconf Registry is the configuration database for GNOME) and removes unused and obsolete entries. Gconf-Cleaner is easy to use and, depending on the state of your system, can remove a large number of entries. It is a graphical program and it also requires some care when working with it (just like cleaning the registry in Windows). Although I have never experienced any problems with Gconf-Cleaner, it is theoretically possible to remove the desired GNOME settings with careless handling. But there is good news as well. If you finally ditch your GNOME desktop, you can always delete the GNOME settings directory in your home folder and start over.

Just proceed with caution ...

Linux has many excellent Linux system cleaning utilities. The ones described in this article are easy to use. Just remember to always be careful when cleaning up your system, especially when working with libraries, dependencies, and anything else that requires root access.

Although Ubuntu is a stable system, everything is of course relative, but in it you need to periodically do something with pens, even if there is a program to do it, but you still need to run it with pens paired with your head. Sometimes unnecessary garbage accumulates in the system, which remains after removing programs, unnecessary dependencies, etc. Of course, you can do everything using the Terminal, for example, with the commands:

sudo apt-get autoremove
this command removes unremoved dependencies on already removed packages,

sudo apt-get clean
cleaning the directory / var / cache / apt / archives /.

After updating the kernels, the old kernels do not go anywhere, but peacefully rest next to the new kernel. Therefore, they also need to be removed and it is best to do this with the very useful Ubuntu Tweak program. In addition to cleaning the system, the program has very different usefulness.
With this tweaker you can:

1. Install programs.
2. Find out information about the system.
3. Manage startup items.
4. Set up login and logout.
5. Customize various desktop options.
6. Adjust Compis Fusion.
7. Manage food and safety.
8. And etc.

Program installation:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa: tualatrix / ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

After installation, the program will appear at: Applications - System -

Another useful system cleanup program is called BleachBit. It is available in the Ubuntu repositories and can be installed directly from the Ubuntu Application Center.

"Softina" allows you to remove unused interface languages.
With BleachBit, you can clean up RAM and swap memory.
The program can delete temporary files, cookles, a list of uploaded files and passwords of all kinds of browsers (Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chrome and others). In addition, the program optimizes the databases used.
The program also cleans the history and cache of Gnome, Nautilus, Adobe Flash.
BleachBit makes it possible to remove all Thumbs.db files that appear as a result of the Windows operating system.

In this thread, we will talk about a feature like Ubuntu System Cleanup.

We have already discussed the topic of cleaning the Ubuntu GNU / Linux system, but this tutorial has been updated with newer versions of Ubuntu and a number of additional tools have been added.

If you want to clean up your Ubuntu system, you need to follow these simple steps to remove unnecessary files.

Ubuntu System Cleanup: Remove Partial Packages

This is another built-in feature, but this time it is not used in the Synaptic Package Manager. This function is easily used in the "Terminal". Now open your terminal and enter the following command

Then enter the command clean clean. This command will help you clean up deleted easily. deb packages that "apt" caches when installing or updating software. To continue cleaning up the system, enter the following command in a terminal window:

Then you can use the autoremove command. The autoremove command removes packages that are installed based on the cache and after the original package has been removed from the system. To use autoremove tye in a terminal window enter the following:

sudo apt-get autoremove

Remove unnecessary local data

Cleaning the Ubuntu system also includes checking for various "junk" files that remain when installing programs.

For this, we need to install localepurge. Delete unneeded local data automatically. This is a simple script that will reclaim wasted disk space on unnecessary local data and localized man pages. It will be automatically called upon completion of any installation run.

Installing localepurge on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install localepurge

After installing any program, apt-get install localepurge will remove all translation files and translate the manual pages in languages \u200b\u200byou cannot read.

If you want to customize localepurge you need to edit /etc/locale.nopurge

This can save you several megabytes of disk space, depending on the packages you installed.

I am trying to install dicus using apt-get

Sudo apt-get install discus

After the installation is complete, you will see something like below

Localepurge: disk space freed in / usr / share / locale: 41860K

Remove "lost" packages

If you want to remove orphaned packages, you need to install the deborphan package.

Installing deborphan on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install deborphan

Using deborphan

Open terminal and enter the following command

sudo deborphan | xargs sudo apt-get -y remove —purge

Removing Lost Packages with GtkOrphan

GtkOrphan (Perl / Gtk2 application for debian systems) is a graphical tool that analyzes the state of your installations and looks for lost libraries. It implements the GUI interface for deborphan, adding the ability to remove packages.

Install GtkOrphan in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install gtkorphan

Removing Orphan packages with Wajig

Simplified Debian package management. Wajig is a single command line wrapper around the scripts apt, apt-cache, dpkg, / etc / init.d, and others, designed for ease of use and to provide extensive documentation for all of its functions.

With a suitable sudo configuration, most (if not all) package installations as well as build tasks can be done from a custom shell. Wajig is also suitable for general system administration. The Gnome GUI command 'gjig' is also included in the package.

Install Wajig on Ubuntu

Open terminal and run the following command

sudo apt-get install wajig

Debfoster - Keep track of what you have installed

Debfoster maintains a list of installed packages that were explicitly requested rather than installed as dependencies. The arguments are completely optional, debfoster can be invoked as such after each dpkg and / or apt-get run.

Alternatively, you can use debfoster to install and remove packages by specifying packages on the command line. Packages with a suffix are removed, and packages without a suffix are installed.

If a new package is encountered, or debfoster notices that a package that was once dependent is now an orphan, it will ask you what to do with it. If you decide to keep it, debfoster will just take note and continue. If you decide that this package is not interesting enough, it will be removed as soon as debfoster has finished asking questions. If your choice causes other packages to become orphans, more questions will arise.

Installing debfoster on Ubuntu

Open terminal and run the following command

sudo apt-get install debfoster

Using debfoster

Use the following command to create the original custodians file

You can always edit the / var / lib / debfosterkeepers file, which defines the packages you want to keep on your system.

To edit the file type of keepers

sudo vi / var / lib / debfoster / keepers

To force debfoster to remove all packages that are not in this list, or dependencies of packages that are in this list. It will also add any packages in this list that are not installed. Thus, your system will match this list. Do this

To keep track of what you installed additionally, do this from time to time:

Xdiskusage - Check where your hard drive space is.

Displays a graph of your disk usage. Du.xdiskusage is a handy program showing that it is using all the free disk space. It is based on the "xdu" program draft by Philip K. Dykstro. The changes have been made, so “du” runs for you, and you can display the free disk space, and create a PostScript version of display.xdiskusage if you want to easily see where the space is on your hard disk.

Install xdiskusage in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install xdiskusage

If you want to open this app you need to use the following command

Once it opens, you will see the following screen

BleachBit

Cleaning the Ubuntu system, as you can see, also includes freeing up disk space. The BleachBit program does an excellent job of this, quickly freeing up disk space and tirelessly protecting your privacy. Free cache, delete cookies, clear internet history, destroy temporary files, delete logs, and throw away unwanted objects you didn't know. Designed for Linux and Windows systems, it cleans thousands of applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari and more. In addition to simple file deletion, BleachBit includes advanced features like file shredding to prevent recovery, wiping free disk space to hide traces of files deleted by other applications, and vacuuming Firefox to make it faster. BleachBit is better than free, open source.

Install Bleachbit in ubuntu

Open terminal and run the following command

sudo apt-get install bleachbit

Using Ubuntu-Tweak

You can also use Ubuntu-Tweak to clean up your system

Ubuntugeek

If you still have questions on the topic "Cleaning the Ubuntu System", you can ask them in the comments form on our website. also be sure to write your options for a quick cleaning of the Ubuntu system.

If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.

During the work of each user, a lot of different "garbage" accumulates, in the form of remnants of configuration files of long-given applications, log files and other information that no one needs.

Screenshots

Description of BleachBit

Strengths of BleachBit:

• The program is well Russified and each item of the cleaner menu is clearly explained, which undoubtedly indicates that the application was developed with an eye on beginners.
• The cleaner allows you to remove unused interface languages.
• BleachBit can be used to clean up RAM and swap memory.
• The program is capable of deleting temporary files, cookles, list of uploaded files and passwords of various browsers (Safari, Chrome, SeaMonkey, etc.). In addition, the program optimizes the databases used.
• BleachBit supports cleaning temporary files and optimizing databases of such programs as aMSN, aMule, Audacios, Beagle, Easytag, Evolution, emesene, gFTP, Gwenview, Lives, Miro, MySQL, and many other programs.
• The program also cleans the history and cache of Gnome, Nautilus, Adobe Flash.
• BleachBit allows you to clean up all files Thumbs.dbthat appear as a result of the Windows operating system.

Weaknesses of BleachBit:

• No weaknesses were found.

• Interface language: Russian
• License:GNU GPL
• Homepage:

Installation

1. In order to load the latest version of BleachBit on Linux, you need to download the distribution from. If you are using Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, Fedora, Red Hat, Mandriva, openSUSE or CentOS operating system, do not forget to install the additional package Bonus pack.
2. You can also download BleachBit on Windows from.
3. The official Ubuntu repository uses an outdated version of BleachBit, so it is not recommended to install from it, but if this is not important for you, you can install it with the command:

   sudo apt-get install bleachbit

Once installed, BleachBit can be launched via the shortcut Applications → System Utilities → BleachBit.

Most likely in this section of the menu there will be 2 shortcuts to launch the application: BleachBit and sudo BleachBit.

If you need to clean up the operating system using BleachBit only in the home directory ( / home / login), then you do not need superuser rights, so to start BleachBit it will be enough to launch it through the shortcut BleachBit.

If you plan to clear the cache Apt, remove unnecessary interface localizations and other actions that require superuser rights, then it is more correct to run the shortcut sudo BleachBit.

BleachBit is not a computer repair tool, but rather a tool to "lighten" your operating system. If your computer breaks down at home, and you do not understand much about this, then the easiest way is to turn to specialists. Computer repair at home is carried out by many organizations that will quickly fix your problem.

But it's worth remembering that not every computer help is equally useful. Computer repair should be entrusted only to real professionals in their field.

Similar 7 programs:

Comments

1. Catherine
   26 January, 16:41
2. Lyokha
   1 February, 10:18

   For some reason, BleachBit as Administrator does not start for me, I suppose this is sudo BleachBi. And without administrator rights, almost nothing is deleted from me, they write “access denied”. Installed as it is written here everything was fine, but something is probably not entirely normal, although I downloaded it from the site's office and installed the bonus pack. Can you tell me what you can do?

3. Alex_vgf
   February 3, 18:34

   thank you, I've been looking for something to clean for a long time))

4. Lyokha
   14 February, 20:01
5. [email protected]
   16 February, 17:52

   Catherine: And I had to delete the history and the transmission cache with this program))

   For the first time I also took out chrome cookies))

   Lyokha: For no reason, sudo BleachBit started up, I tried before - not in any, and then after a week I tried again - it started quickly without any complaints and cleaned everything without brakes. But I still have to climb the folders myself and manually delete a lot

   I'm glad that everything worked out by itself

6. Yuriy
   8 June, 19:01

   Good day! Who can tell you why the program persistently displays a message about the lack of free space on the root and in the home during the scanning process? At the root, I have allocated 60 GB, Home - 260! At the root, about only 10 GB is used. What nonsense? Moreover, on different distributions I installed it many times and all the time the same thing! Is this a "chronic glitch" or am I misunderstanding something?

7. Such a thing
   10 December, 00:17

   When launched from the terminal, bleachbit will send: (bleachbit: 19322): IBUS -WARNING **: The owner of /home/uzer/.config/ibus/bus is not root!