How to Free Up Space in Ubuntu

Posted on September 22nd, 2016

In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to get more free space apart from deleting the trash or deleting the .ISO files. Despite Ubuntu not having defragmentation and disk clean-up tools, we can accomplish this ourselves. By doing this, you will open up more free space to utilize.

 

Clean the APT Cache (And Do It Regularly)

Basically Ubuntu stores all its updates downloaded and stored in a cache of the disk. This process is to ensure that you have the files for future reference. This is a great advantage for a user who regularly adds and removes applications, which may require you to configure or reinstall the required packages, or if you have a poor connection. However, behind the scenes what happens is that the apt package cache consumes memory which may swell to several hundred MB’s. We can check the amount of consumption consumed by the apt packages by issuing the following command:

du -sh /var/cache/apt/archives

To clean the apt cache on Ubuntu simply run the following command:

sudo apt-get clean

The apt get clean command will erase ALL the packages stored in the apt cache. If users are facing a slow or discontinuous or capped connections, you may want to consider skipping this step.

 

Remove Old Kernels

# sudo apt autoremove –purge

Reading package list… Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information… Done

The following packages will be REMOVED

linux-headers-4.4.0-22* linux-headers-4.4.0-22-generic*

linux-image-4.4.0-22* linux-image-extra-4.4.0-22-generic*

0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 4 to remove and 201 not to upgrade.

After this operation, 350 MB disk space will be freed.

 

The user should approach this step with the utmost caution. We do have a choice of the kernel to boot up, which is smart way especially if any missing occurs while using the latest ones. It’s easy to remove old kernels in Ubuntu. You can do it from the command line using the following command:

sudo apt-get autoremove –purge

This command will only remove kernels that are no longer needed and installed from the Ubuntu archive through system updates.

 

Uninstall Apps & Games You Never Use

Most of the unnoticed area of our computer is where we install the software for temporary use or to handle a particular task for that moment. However, by erasing that software from our PC, it will allow us to free up some space on our computer.

To remove a specific app by name run:

sudo apt-get remove package-name1 package-name2

To remove packages and dependencies that are no longer required (because you’ve uninstalled other packages or newer versions have replaced them) run the following command:

sudo apt-get autoremove

 

 Use A System Cleaner like BleachBit

BleachBit software was developed in Python programming language and uses PyGTK. This software allows you to wipe out every app, cache, log and system process which are not easily found. The most identical software for BleachBit will be CCleaner. This has the power of removing everything and anything which should be used with caution. BleachBit can be directly installed from the Ubuntu software center. You must run this program as root and check the boxes which the user wish to clean up. Click ‘Preview’ to get an estimate of how much space they take up, and click “Clean” to remove them.

 

Stay up to date

Updating the software is an important thing. In Linux, it regularly frees space rather than every new update adds more overhead package updates.

 

If you need any further assistance please contact our support department.

 

 

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