I noticed while updating my system just how many packages I have installed that I don’t recognize.
I tend to think that minimalism is better for security, so I’d like to remove any packages that I’m not using, but this is a bit of a scary task.
Does anybody have a safe method for reviewing and purging unused or bloat packages while obviously making sure not to accidentally remove important dependencies?
I’m on arch btw.
Just leave it. Either they do something in the background. Then you’ll get issues when they’re missing, and you’ll never know which package is missing for what.
Or they don’t do anything, then they just take up a few MB of disk space.“Cleaning up” is the most sure-fire way to destroy your OS, and absolutely not worth anyone’s time. Trust me, I’ve made that mistake multiple times.
Let’s just say my last attempt at automated cleanup didn’t go well (my desktop disappeared!) Now I’m a collector and keep everything.
That’s because a lot of them are dependencies for the packages you actually want to use, and those needed for the system to work as designed.
These are just dependencies for your packages. However, Arch doesn’t automatically clean the downloaded files after installation so that ends up taking space. On my Dell laptop that has only a 64 GB eMMC, the installation package files took and whopping 5 GB of space, sitting there doing nothing. I nuked them (it didn’t remove the installed apps and libs, only the already used package files). Run:
sudo pacman -Scc