I'm trying to keep my system as clean and slimmed down as possible and I was wondering what files are safe to delete after I've downloaded software. Also, In just a few days I've accumulated several dozen megs of software just from software packages for programs and plugins I need. It's only logical to assume that these will keep accumulating and I can see that becoming a problem. Is there a program I can install that get rid of the the outdated versions of these programs and plugins? Any help is greatly appreciated.

1) What distro are you using (Ubuntu, openSUSE, Mandriva, one of the others)?

2) Are you downloading the software from the internet or using the package manager?

I'm using fedora and using the package manager right now but trying to download from third party sites, but having some difficulty. I get rejected when I try to use the command line and I think it's because I dont have the proper package to allow those downloads to install. Does that sound right? Is it possible to download stuff from third party sites without using the command line. From some of the reading I've done it looks like RPM's could be an option.

I usually run 'yum clean all' once a month or so to get rid of the leftovers from installing and removing stuff using the package manager.

There is also a program called 'package-cleanup'. I haven't used it though.

Open a terminal window and type 'su - package-cleanup' and enter the root users password.

If the program is installed, you should get a quick list of usage options. If you get an error that says program not found, you can install it via 'yum install yum-utils'.

When downloading from third party sites, you should be able to download the rpm file by clicking on the download link in which ever web browser you use.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks, that's really helpful info. I'll give it a try.

When I come across something I'm not sure about, I first look at "ls -lut" to see when it was last accessed and then use "lsof" to see if anything is using it now. Of course I'll Google it too see if that helps identify what it is for. Tools like rpm's "--whatprovides" option can also be very helpful.

If for some reason I'm still not sure, I'll rename it "is.originalname.junk" and see what happens over time - being sure to include a reboot, of course. If nothing breaks, it looks safe to remove or is easy to put back if it was needed for some obscure reason.

It pretty much depends on what you mean by "as clean and slimmed down as possible"

If you are referring to standard cleaning in the boundary of your distro, tahan your package manager should do. See and follow hints posted by guys above.

But if you mean HARDCORE cleaning, than it's more complicated. You can remove debugging symbols from your executables and libraries, you can compress or even remove man and info pages, you even can manually remove libraries you are sure you will never use. But all of this requires good knowledge of what exactly are you doing and why.