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I am in the process of cleaning up my system. And I see a lot of space occupied by this folder /var/cache/apt/archives (1.5GB). Is it absolutely necessary to keep all these archives?

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3 Answers

up vote 15 down vote accepted

You don't need to keep them around if you don't want them. Executing a

sudo apt-get clean

will clean out the directory.

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It is better to save packages elsewhere then clean it up [Jorge Castro's process]. When you reinstall OS or a package it will not download again which save time and bandwidth. apt-get first check require packages in local storage[/var/cache/apt/archives] if does not exists then download else just do install. So you can save packages for future uses.

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I doubt he will need all the 1,5Gb of updates to use on a new system! – Bruno Pereira♦ Oct 12 '11 at 20:13
They can be moved on a CD or other support, so they don't waste space on the local drive. This is called a 'local repository'. – ignis Nov 7 '12 at 20:37
up vote 1 down vote

You can adjust settings in Synaptic package manager, menu Settings/Parameters, the Files tab. From there you can also delete the cache.

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