Linux Maintenance

jjconstr

Active Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2020
Messages
110
Reaction score
45
Credits
611
Are there ways to do maintenance on Linux distros like there are on Windows? I use Ubuntu Bionic Beaver dual booted with Win 7. on Acer Aspire 5733z-4851, Intel Pentium P6100 cpu, 4GB DDR3 Memory, 500GB HDD. Recently slowed and "lost system printing service". Any help would be appreciated. First time with Linux, not familar on the technical side.
 


Linux for the most takes care of itself other than browsing history and thumbnail cache.

Browser cleaning is done through the browser menu in history.


To clean thumbnail cache copy and paste these commands into the terminal one at a time and press enter.

clear out thumbnail cache

rm -v -f ~/.cache/thumbnails/*/*.png ~/.thumbnails/*/*.png


rm -v -f ~/.cache/thumbnails/*/*/*.png ~/.thumbnails/*/*/*.png
 
Linux for the most takes care of itself other than browsing history and thumbnail cache.

Browser cleaning is done through the browser menu in history.


To clean thumbnail cache copy and paste these commands into the terminal one at a time and press enter.

clear out thumbnail cache

rm -v -f ~/.cache/thumbnails/*/*.png ~/.thumbnails/*/*.png


rm -v -f ~/.cache/thumbnails/*/*/*.png ~/.thumbnails/*/*/*.png
Will thumbnail cache cause slowdown if not cleared? I've been having times where my mouse freezes repeatedly for a few seconds at a time. At first thought it was caused by downloads. Now i don't know.
 
poorguy, I ran the commands, seemed to remove a few dozen lines of something. And I copied your post to LibreOffice Writer for use later. Thanks for your help.
 
Will thumbnail cache cause slowdown if not cleared? I've been having times where my mouse freezes repeatedly for a few seconds at a time. At first thought it was caused by downloads. Now i don't know.
Hello jjconstr,

You're welcome.

Umm I don't know.

I guess over a long enough time if never cleared they would eventually start to fill up space on the hard drive.
Although with the massive hard drives available these days I doubt it would create any problem.

I use small hard drives 40 GB and 80 GB what's laying around so I clear browser cache / history and thumbnail cache out every month.

I know the first time I cleared mine it had a pile of them saved and it took two runs to clear them all.
 
Thanks, poorguy, I ran those commands and now wait to see if the freezing stops. So far, so good! Much appreciated.
 
Maintenance job #1: Routinely and consistently apply updates and patches (same thing).
Everything else comes after that.
 
g'day jj :)

you've been running "the Beaver" for a few months now, hopefully performing updates.

if you get a chance, go to Terminal and type in and enter the following

Code:
du -ah /var/cache/apt/archives

it wiil spool off output, and i am interested in the human-readable figure at the bottom left-hand side when you finish.

cheers all and

Avagudweegend

wizard
 
yours is nice & squeaky clean, Tom :), what distro is that?

... and do you ever run, manually,

Code:
sudo apt-get clean

# and/or

sudo apt-get autoclean

# and/or

sudo apt-get autoremove

# or the apt equivalents??

if not, then your linux has another equivalent built in.

i'll get yours and the OP's responses first, and then explain in more detail.

a brief item of interest on those 3 commands can be read here

https://askubuntu.com/questions/984797/clean-autoclean-and-autoremove-combining-them-is-a-good-step

cheers

wiz
 
Hello Wizard,

The Linux Distro I ran this du -ah /var/cache/apt/archives command from is LXLE.

Besides the normal browser cleaning.


rm -v -f ~/.cache/thumbnails/*/*.png ~/.thumbnails/*/*.png
rm -v -f ~/.cache/thumbnails/*/*/*.png ~/.thumbnails/*/*/*.png


I occassionally run these.

sudo apt clean
sudo apt autoclean
sudo apt autoremove
 
I'm pretty sure you'll have to do that with sudo or root.
 
I'm pretty sure you'll have to do that with sudo or root.

not necessary ... "partial" is always empty moments after it is used, it is a holding house for packages downloaded with apt or apt-get, and they are extracted by dpkg at "the other end" and installed.

so the figure does not differ with or without sudo/root

wiz
 
Hi JJconstr! i hope you are doing great. Well, first of all, what is maintenance to you, how do you maintain your Windows 7 computer? Here is my recommendation to you, you said, it's your first time using Linux, well at some point , we were all beginners and we are still learning from each other, learning from the amazing people in the forum. i can confidently say that you have started from a good start by installing Ubuntu which is the most windows-like linux Distro out there in terms of usability, simplicity. But i urge you, to run your linux (ubuntu) on Virtual machines out there like Oracle Vm, VMware and not dual boot it with your existing Os.
 
I would say the distro you are running, has very little to do with whether it looks like Windows or not.
Your windows manager has a lot more to do with it.
MATE and Cinnamon look something like some versions of Windows. I dare say if I install either one of of these desktops on SuSE, CentOS, Fedora, or Ubuntu, you can't tell which distro I'm running by looking at the desktop.

If you like the Android tablet interface, Gnome3 is probably the way to go.

If you like the Mac interface, I would say deepin or pantheon is the way to go.

For many years I used KDE (now plasma) because it was the default on Solaris.

but I have also used 9wm, blackbox, awesome, bspwm, fluxbox, enlightenment, icewm, lumina, lxde,
musca, openbox, sawfish, sugar, and xfce.
 
issa

Thank you for your reply. Maintenance to me is removing temp files, unnecessary files, defrag, check disk, everything windows has gotten me used to doing.

I was wondering about Windows remaining installed in my pc, whether it could still bee using resources or doing tracking. What do you see as problems with the dual boot? Are VM's on the windows desktop, like another program, or like the way terminal opens in linux? So windows is still there?
Quote: But i urge you, to run your linux (ubuntu) on Virtual machines out there like Oracle Vm, VMware and not dual boot it with your existing Os.
You're referring to my current dual boot installation? Or adding another distro (triple boot) or both?
jjconstr
 
Hi JJconstr! "Maintenance to me is removing temp files, unnecessary files, defrag, check disk, everything windows has gotten me used to doing." you are right jj. whatever you mentioned is part of the maintenance and many more. Nevertherless Linux also offers us same opportunities to clean up and maintain our servers. you can remove unwanted files in your linux machine and many more. please check out the right commands to use to clean up and maintain your linux machine online. I also mentioned the use of Virtualization technologies such as Vmware and oracle vm because they are great for multitasking and you can run your linux OS and windows simultaneously, that way you can increase your productivity without having to use one OS at a time which sounds cumbersome to me but there's nothing technical really.

check the link below, hopefully that will help you decide which one of the two to use:

have fun!
 
Here's one from Sparky Linux and it appears to be the cleanest.

Cleared all browser history and cache.

Cleared thumbnail cache using. these commands.
Code:
rm -v -f ~/.cache/thumbnails/*/*.png ~/.thumbnails/*/*.png

rm -v -f ~/.cache/thumbnails/*/*/*.png ~/.thumbnails/*/*/*.png


Then ran these commands.
Code:
sudo apt clean

sudo apt autoclean

sudo apt autoremove


Output after cleaning.
Code:
thomas@Dell-Optiplex-380:~$ du -ah /var/cache/apt/archives
0    /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
du: cannot read directory '/var/cache/apt/archives/partial': Permission denied
4.0K    /var/cache/apt/archives/partial
16K    /var/cache/apt/archives
thomas@Dell-Optiplex-380:~$
 

Members online


Top