System Cleaner

Ubuntu Blueprint | intrepid-changes Announcement 1 | intrepid-changes Announcement 2 | intrepid-changes Announcement 3

Hear this: If you don't update with Update Manager, 100% of packages, configuration files, and well, cruft, are left behind after you upgrade whatever packages you upgrade. Update Manager removes 50 to 75 percent of that leftover kernel, that library file, and everything else, while apt, or Synaptic just don't. So whenever you hear somebody say "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" etc. don't listen to them. Just run "sudo apt-get update" and upgrade the packages you want using Update Manager.

But back to this blog. A blueprint has been proposed for Intrepid to help "cleanup cruft" that will remove 99% (or so said) leftover files after updating. It sounds really exciting, but I don't mind it. I have a lot of disk space, and I like manually finding out useless files and deleting them. One thing I am concerned about this is the bloat this will cause. Why create a separate application? Why not just implement this into Update Manager that will run silently in the background while Update Manager does its usual job? We'll have to wait and see.

However, if you checked its entry on http://packages.ubuntu.com/ , you will notice that it is in the Universe repository, not in the Main repository. It also has a GTK front-end, meaning it's a command-line program otherwise. Obviously Ubuntu's waiting for this to become necessary, bug-less, fully-functional and mature.

UPDATE: Last paragraph updated, and intrepid-changes link added.