When i researched ubuntu i thought it was supposed to take up 3 gb. surprised that it's taking up 15 at the moment. I think it was at 11gb at install. was i supposed to uncheck updates i didn't want/need after 1st startup . I just clicked the button to update all (default). I have lots of freespace on my hd anyways, but I'm used to seeing a smaller footprint than that on a fresh install / fresh hd.

Using this is one way, from the application end to remove what you won't use. If you happen to know of packages you don't want, that can be done from Synaptic Package Manager System --> Administration --> Synaptic Package Manager

Suggestion:
Whenever installing any distro, start with the absolute minimum of stuff. Get the basic system configured, make sure networking works, and then add things as you need them.

I have all manner of stuff installed on my system (PCLOS) and it's sitting at 6.6GB--hard to imagine how any install could get up to 15GB. You might want to do some sleuthing with du to see exactly where the fat is:
cd /
du -sc *

If a default Ubuntu 7.10 installation was chosen, it should have been about 2.5 GB for gnome.

Agreed - I run in under 5 Gig. Swap and /home included.

Edit: just had a look at my build for the Hardy alpha - just under 4.5 Gig - including swap.

thank you all for quick responses. I will snoop around and trim the fat with synaptic and add/remove apps.

You may find support for languages you don't use. These can be removed. I'd also consider removing support for language fonts you don't use. This will help OpenOffice load much faster. You may also find you still have deb packages on disk that you don't need after the package is installed. You also may havr selected to download source files for everything. These aren't required. Lastly there are caches from internet access and saved thumbnails. Thumbnails if needed are created on the fly. The only time you'll notice a performance hit for thumbnails is in nautilus with many image files in the same folder.

Right- I'm at 6.6g total space used, and that's with Gnome and KDE, Open Office, additional Gnome apps, additional KDE apps, additional games, lots of pics and music files, and all system updates. Kinda makes me wonder if something went awry...

Cheers

As others have said, something is wrong. I've only got about 30 in use on my laptop, and thats with several games, ton of apps, and about 23gigs worth of Music and ripped movies.

Are you using Ubuntu Ultimate by chance, and not the Ubuntu from ubuntu.com

IGF

Disclaimer: I'm not an Ubuntu user!

Have you run this?

hey. I have ubuntu gutsy gibbon 7.10 i386 on a live cd that I downloaded from ubuntu site. I've deleted things I didn't think I needed like other languages and apts i didn't need.

I found 2 places that list my c:/. The first place I looked and this is why I posted this thread was system> computer> filesystem> properties> and it said I had 12gb used space. Then I stumbled upon system> system moniter and found that I had 3.3 gb being used.

why the discrepency?

I haven't tried that sudo apt get clean thingy yet. I'm scared quite frankly. I've punched in codes to try to fix my computer and it ended up breakin and not booting up. I found the easiest solution was to just pop in the live cd and wipe out everything with a new install. I've probably done that 4 times.

is that code safe or will it debilitate my system?

is there a GUI that will allow me to delete temp files,like disk cleanup in windows? source code jargin, what about those deb files that I no longer need?

UBUNTU is the first and only Linux distro I've ever used.
keep inmind that I'm new to linux and sticking by it even though windows in the past has been really straight forward.

I will post more threads to get my system fine tuned cause this site is a supurb resource. thank you all for your input.
4:20

You should probably think of your computer in a slightly different way from now on. All directories are referenced relative to a single directory called root whose symbol is / (not to be confused with /root, which is the root user's home folder). Thus, C:\ no longer applies. But that's by the by.
I don't know, but you might try running a couple of command line programs to see if you get the same result twice from both a GUI and a CLI program:in a terminal should show you how much disk space you are using and have free.
It's best to try and fix whatever problem caused the system to break, rather than simply reinstalling each time. It's the most comprehensive way to learn. There's a multitude of tools available to rescue a broken system, and you'd be surprised at just how borked a system can be and yet still be recoverable.
If you have any doubt about a piece of code being suggested on a forum or a website, check out any documentation you can. A good first place to start is the man page for a given command. So, first check out man sudo. That'll tell you that it allows you to run a program with root privileges, which is a dangerous thing, so you were right to question it. You'll see from the EXAMPLES in the sudo manpage that sudo prefixes another command, but executes it with root privileges. Thus, your next step would be to find out what apt-get does: man apt-get will get you started. Then, search through the manpage until you find a mention of the option clean.

As I said, I don't use Ubuntu, but I have in the past, and all it does is delete the cache of .deb files you have installed software from. It shouldn't hose your system.
Not that I know of, but that's not to say it doesn't exist. Most rubbish gets put in /tmp, which might be cleaned every time you reboot. Otherwise, everything in there should be safe to delete (make sure you leave the /tmp directory itself though!).

thanks pwc101

I'll try that tonight when I get home. This linux system is a bit different from windows arcitecture that I'm used to. Can't wait till I work out the kinks. I'll keep tweaking till I'm satisfied.........probably never.