'Cleaning up' a Linux OS ?

Is there any point ? In windows of course we have a whole host of clean-up
tools to choose from ( CCleaner, temp. file cleaners, reg cleaners etc. etc.).

I have tried deborphan in Ubuntu but am unsure how reliable it is. Blindly
cleaning orphaned packages can result in needed packages like
gstreamer/bad/ugly etc. being removed. This can also happen when using
the autoremove <package> command as the dependencies removed
may affect other programs as well.
Only removing those packages marked 'residual-config' in Synaptic seems
reliable in my experience.
So, for a newish user like me, maybe it's best to not strive for
a clean OS ..... ? (Yes, I had to download the gstreamer packages
again. )

 

Clean what exactly? Applications install neatly into known directories and go away when you remove these directories. So there's little to clean. No registry to keep millions of useless entries.

Just run apt-get clean, autoclean and autoremove and you'll be fine.

Mrk

 

I'm just saying be careful with autoremove as it will remove the package and
the dependencies. Did this with a faulty banshee player, and gstreamer
packages were also removed. Of course Totem and some other players also
use gstreamer and won't be able to play some formats due to missing codecs.
Anyway that's how it was here.

BTW. banshee utilises some files from mono package which is used to run
.Net client and server. Read this .. http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2008/08/04/how-to-remove-mono-m-from-ubuntu-hardy-heron/