Ubuntu – What’s the good way to clean up the system (and is Bleachbit safe) on Ubuntu 14.04

14.04cleanup

I used Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) for about a year (actually upgraded it from Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin)), and during the time I installed some packages, and removed some other packages.

Now I think it's probably time to clean up the system as it's likely several unused stuff is lying out there (both from the old 12.04 and the new 14.04), and I hope to have a cleaner system that works faster.

I found these two links:

Both links seem good, but when I came across to what they said about Bleachbit then one says yes, and one says no – a bit contradicting.

What should be done for this common task?

Best Answer

To remove any packages that aren't needed by the system:

sudo apt-get autoremove

The other answer for this question:

sudo apt-get clean

This just clears the package cache for downloading new packages, it will not uninstall any packages.

See: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet/Howto

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to fix a “Software caused connection abort” error in Ubuntu 14.04

I found something quite similar. Only I can access some files and not others. In my case the problem is limited to the connection with gvfs (and here SMB only - it works well using AFP to another server). I used a workaround by mounting the shares manually or via fstab. Both worked for me.

Ingo

Ubuntu – Clean install of Ubuntu 14.04 – Screen goes black after login, but mouse works

Turns out unity does not support my video card. Seems there are a number of older NVIDIA cards that one would think would work with unity, but do not because they are blacklisted. For more info on this is found here.

I tested my video card with unity:

/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

returned:

OpenGL vendor string:   NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce FX 5700LE/AGP/SSE2
OpenGL version string:  2.1.2 NVIDIA 173.14.39

Not software rendered:    yes
Not blacklisted:          no
GLX fbconfig:             yes
GLX texture from pixmap:  yes
GL npot or rect textures: yes
GL vertex program:        yes
GL fragment program:      yes
GL vertex buffer object:  yes
GL framebuffer object:    yes
GL version is 1.4+:       yes

Unity 3D supported:       no

I repeated this with both nouveau or nvidia-173, unity was not supported on either.

I found the following work arounds:

GNOME

I was able to run Ubuntu 14.04 with gnome instead of unity.

@tty (Ctrl + Alt + F1):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-session-flashback

reboot

@login prompt:

Click the image on the upper right of the name
Select: GNOME Flashback (Metacity)

Lubuntu or Xubuntu

An alternative to Unity and GNOME is Lubuntu or Xubuntu.

Just for the record, I did not try either of these since I was able to run Ubuntu with gnome.

Unity-2d on Ubuntu 14.04?

In Ubuntu 12.04, I remember running Unity-2d because I was not able to run unity. In Ubuntu 12.04, we were able to select Unity-2d at the login screen similar to the way that gnome is selected in the text above.

I was able to install unity-2d @ a tty: sudo apt-get install unity-2d However, I was not able switch from unity to unity-2d. I read some place that unity defaults to unity-2d when it can not run, apparently that did not work in my case.