Arch Linux

hank863

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 77

Delete Unneeded Files and Folders

Is there a program that I could use to remove unneeded files and folders?  I've been messing around with Gnome and KDE lately to determine which I prefer.  I've decided to stick with Gnome for right now, but I'm left with all of the KDE folders.  I know I could use pacman to remove the folders initially created when I installed the packages, but what about the others?

windtalker

Member

Registered: 2008-03-17

Posts: 220

Re: Delete Unneeded Files and Folders

The programs I've used in the past had the nasty habit of removing things I needed.
I myself would play it safe and just pacman -Rd kde     pacman -Q | grep -e kde

MoonSwan

Member

From: Great White North

Registered: 2008-01-23

Posts: 881

Re: Delete Unneeded Files and Folders

If you're wanting to be a bit more brave, pacman -Rns also works OK for the most part.  Don't use the "cascade" switch though!  It can & will break things more often than not.  Trust me on this, I speak from experience. 

hank863

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 77

Re: Delete Unneeded Files and Folders

I use pacman -Rsn for uninstalling most of the time anyway.  I'm wondering about the folders that are still left behind after that.  I can always manually go through my home directory, /usr/lib, and others to manually remove folders I know I don't need.  I was looking for something more automated though.

droog

Member

Registered: 2004-11-18

Posts: 877

Re: Delete Unneeded Files and Folders

I use pacman -Rsn for uninstalling most of the time anyway.  I'm wondering about the folders that are still left behind after that.  I can always manually go through my home directory, /usr/lib, and others to manually remove folders I know I don't need.  I was looking for something more automated though.

You should only need to clean your home directory yourself, I remember seeing a program that was supposed to do it for you called bleachbit in the aur, It's pretty easy to rm -rf ~/.kde though.

hank863

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 77

Re: Delete Unneeded Files and Folders

I deleted the .kde and .kde4 folders in my home directory and recovered 200mb of disc space.  I also decided to run bleachbit.  It's a great program.  Thanks for the lead!  After running it, I recovered another 500mb of space without any negative effects that I can see as of now.

Chrysalis

Member

Registered: 2008-07-07

Posts: 155

Re: Delete Unneeded Files and Folders

The programs I've used in the past had the nasty habit of removing things I needed.
I myself would play it safe and just pacman -Rd kde     pacman -Q | grep -e kde

Thats just stupid unless you want to be left with a bunch of pkgs with missing dependencies and a ton of orphans. -Rsn is the reverse or -S and wont remove anything unless you had a bunch of orphans initially prior to installing kde and should warn you if its needed by other apps before completing that you might want to uninstall first. -Rd is there pretty much only for single pkgs that pacman has a problem upgrading, never use it unless you know what you are doing.