I am using openSuse 10.2 on a Presario Laptop. What kind of "chores" or upkeep should I perform with linux? I heard there is no need for Defraging, but what about cleaning up lost files, emptying caches, deleting cookies etc.? I like trying out a different programs then removing ones that I don't work or that I don't use. In Windoze, I had to reinstall the OS every so often because of crap build-up, can I prevent this in Linux?

Thank you for the help here.

Linux does get what they call "cruft." Many scripts have been written to help deal with this. A quick Google of "cruft script" should return several good results. I know several Gentoo users have written one. I have no experience using them though. If you really want to clean out look for articles about freeing up space on your distro's wiki. Cleaning out the tmp and var directories are usually good places to start. Also programs like Firefox come with utilities to clear cookies and such.

Hope that helped some!

Most upkeep is handled by a linux system automatically.

The system logs are moved and deleted by a daemon called logrotate on most systems. That makes sure your system logs never get too big. If you used a default system install, and did 3 or so partitions, you don't need to worry about /var/log getting too big. If you did a server type install, where you have different partitions for each directory (/var has one partition, /usr has another) then you want to make sure you aren't filling up your partition with data.

Defragging is not something linux needs to have done. By its design *nix OSes don't break apart files and throw them anywhere convenient on a hard drive.

Cookies is a matter of preference, and that has nothing to do with the OS. The servers that set up your cookies don't care what your OS is. You'll have a cookie from google regardless of the OS. The hyper paranoid clear cookies after every use and don't store any passwords. Most folks just don't care. Cookies expire based on time. I have never cleared my cookied (tossed a few of them though!), and have never had a problem.

You don't need to worry about bots/malware installs in linux. As long as you don't foolishly run as root user in a GUI, anything you do as a normal user can't hurt the system. If windows users didn't run as administrator full time, they'd have much less of a problem as well.

Say you install a trojan in windows. It messes with your TCP/IP, and any number of other things. If something tries to install as a regular user, it will fail under *nix, because it doesn't have root permissions, so it can't install to a system wide location. In short, never run as root in a GUI, and your web browsing will be safe under *nix. Crap can't build up, because it never gets installled in the first place!

Peace,
JimBass

in addition to Jim's comments:

with all *x operating systems there is a maximum number of sytem boots before it will automatically check the filesystem. This is dependent on the actual os version, as it is configurable.
checking the system logs after this has happened [ since you most likely have a gui boot, it's the default with suse ] and look at how badly fragmented the partitions are, don't worry about it until it reaches 5%.
by then you should, by all reasonable standards, be rebuilding he system anyway.

while unix and unix like operating systems use non fragmenting files systems, there is some fragmentation that occur over time, if you rebuild your filesystem every 6 months as recommended, then the minor fragmentation [ 1% ] that occurs over a few months is not a concern.

malware issues?
in 10 years of being linux only, I have never had any malware problems
never had more than a firewall running.
and only use the root login to perform admin tasks, once a month.

Who the heck reinstalls after six months? That sounds more like a windows way of doing things. The nice thing about Linux is you do not ever have to reinstall unless you screw things up.

I have been running the same Debian Sid install for two years and I love to install new apps, and in the 2 yrs I have never had any noticeable slow down or problems.With 20k packages in the Debian repos I have lot to play around with. A reinstall should never be necessary under normal use with the exception of perhaps getting hacked, which on a laptop you shouldn't have to worry about.

Noone except *buntu users reinstalls every six months. Many Debian and Slackware servers have ran years without reinstalls.

The only thing you really need to worry about is keeping your apps updated.

you still need backups
you still need to upgrade package that have security fix (including the kernel, firefox etc). It all depends what your PC is used for and what services you run, and how paranoid you are
Antivirus (for zinblows mostly) database update can be automated

the "cache" partition takes care of itself

/var/cache or /tmp never noticed it going out of hand

deleting old package: all accounted for by rpm or other package manager

I also found an occasional poke in your home directory is good. I found a folder under .local/usr/share/.Trash/files that isn't my normal trash folder, and it has a gig of junk I had to get rid of. All of those .program files sometimes need a look to make sure you aren't acquiring junk. Old .program files and directories that you tried and deleted still hang on. They are rarely big files, but they aren't helping anything either.

A variety of junk can be left on your computer, be it from sloppy ebuilds (Gentoo) or lame RPMs.

A book called "Degunking Linux" is avaailable from bn.com
barnes & noble. It describes what you are lookinbg for.

-linux rules

I appreciate the help. The book sounds very interesting. I'll have to check it out.

Why Is There Gunk in Linux?
http://tinyurl.com/y27r7o

Excerpts from the book mentioned above.

The are a couple of programs like kleansweep and fslint that will help clean up the junk that can build up.
FSlint - Duplicate file finder for linux
http://www.pixelbeat.org/fslint/

Kleansweep