Leftover folders and .tar.bz2 files?

Question

When I download a .tar.bz2 file such as compat-wireless and extract it and finish patching it, what can I do with the .tar.bz2 files and the folders creating from extracting.

My Home folder is starting to get a bit crowded and hard to navigate through. Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

You can safely remove them, however I like to keep them around just in case I need to reinstall again.

What I do to cut down on the clutter is keep a separate directory called "src" for things like tarballs and source trees.