Most of us will free up the disk space whenever we face out of disk space on Linux system.
It should be performed frequently, to make space for installing any new application and dealing with other important files.
Housekeeping is one of the routine task of Linux administrator, which allows them to maintain the disk utilization which is under threshold.
There are several ways to clean up our system space.
There is no need to clean up your system when you have enough storage capacity.
But if your have limited space then freeing up disk space becomes a necessity.
In this article, I’ll show you some of the easiest or simple ways to clean up your Ubuntu system and get more space.
How to check Free Space on Ubuntu systems?
Use df Command to check current disk utilization on your system.
$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on udev 975M 0 975M 0% /dev tmpfs 200M 1.7M 198M 1% /run /dev/sda1 30G 16G 13G 55% / tmpfs 997M 0 997M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock tmpfs 997M 0 997M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
GUI users can use “Disk Usage Analyzer tool” to view current usage.
1) Remove the unwanted packages that are no longer required
The following command removes the dependency libs and packages that are no longer required by the system.
These packages were installed automatically to satisfy the dependencies of an installed package.
Also, it removes old Linux kernels that were installed in the system.
It removes orphaned packages which are not longer needed from the system, but not purges them.
$ sudo apt-get autoremove [sudo] password for daygeek: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-utils galera-3 libaio1 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap libconfig-inifiles-perl libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libjemalloc1 liblua5.2-0 libmysqlclient20 libopts25 libterm-readkey-perl mariadb-client-10.1 mariadb-client-core-10.1 mariadb-common mariadb-server-10.1 mariadb-server-core-10.1 mysql-common sntp socat 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 25 to remove and 23 not upgraded. After this operation, 189 MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
To purge them, use the --purge option together with the command for that.
$ sudo apt-get autoremove --purge Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: apache2-bin* apache2-data* apache2-utils* galera-3* libaio1* libapr1* libaprutil1* libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3* libaprutil1-ldap* libconfig-inifiles-perl* libdbd-mysql-perl* libdbi-perl* libjemalloc1* liblua5.2-0* libmysqlclient20* libopts25* libterm-readkey-perl* mariadb-client-10.1* mariadb-client-core-10.1* mariadb-common* mariadb-server-10.1* mariadb-server-core-10.1* mysql-common* sntp* socat* 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 25 to remove and 23 not upgraded. After this operation, 189 MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
2) Empty the Trash Can
There might a be chance, that you may have a large amount of useless data residing in your trash.It takes up your system space. This is one of the best way to clean up those and get some free space on your system.
To clean up this, simply use the file manager to empty your trash can.
3) Clean up the APT cache
Ubuntu uses APT Command (Advanced Package Tool) for package management like installing, removing, searching, etc,.
By default every Linux operating system keeps a cache of downloaded and installed packages on their respective directory.
Ubuntu also does the same, it keeps every updates it downloads and installs in a cache on your disk.
Ubuntu system keeps a cache of DEB packages in /var/cache/apt/archives directory.
Over time, this cache can quickly grow and hold a lot of space on your system.
Run the following command to check the current utilization of APT cache.
$ sudo du -sh /var/cache/apt 147M /var/cache/apt
It cleans obsolete deb-packages. I mean to say, less than clean.
$ sudo apt-get autoclean
It removes all packages kept in the apt cache.
$ sudo apt-get clean
4) Uninstall the unused applications
I would request you to check the installed packages and games on your system and delete them if you are using rarely.
This can be easily done via “Ubuntu Software Center”.
5) Clean up the thumbnail cache
The cache folder is a place where programs stored data they may need again, it is kept for quick access but is not essential to keep. It can be generated again or downloaded again.
If it’s really filling up your hard drive then you can delete things without worrying.
Run the following command to check the current utilization of APT cache.
$ du -sh ~/.cache/thumbnails/ 412K /home/daygeek/.cache/thumbnails/
Run the following command to delete them permanently from your system.
$ rm -rf ~/.cache/thumbnails/*
