Debian/Ubuntu cleanup
Springtime, that means cleaning out that lazy-maintained, often-upgraded dusty Debian/Ubuntu install, right? The following commands proved to be very handy in getting rid of stuff you most likely don’t need anymore, and you basicly won’t have to lift a finger.
I’m pretty sure this only removes packages you don’t need, but if you’re worried, you can do an apt-get simulation by adding -s to the command line, and you can check the list of packages deborphan thinks are useless by just executing sudo deborphan.
GUI-driven version of these tools are called computer-janitor, gtkorphan and, more generally synaptic package manager.
# Install required stuff sudo apt-get install deborphan # Cleaning packages which are not needed anymore and partial packages sudo apt-get --purge autoremove sudo apt-get autoclean # Cleaning orphaned libraries sudo deborphan | xargs sudo apt-get -y remove --purge # Cleaning unneeded translations sudo apt-get install localepurge # Select which languages you want to keep, then: sudo localepurge