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[Running Trusty Desktop with Kernel 3.16.0-50-generic #67 on x86_64]

[My box is set up as dual boot - Ubuntu sits along WinXP, which lives in a always mounted ntfs-3g FS]

I have unusual hidden files that in my $HOME folder (uid 1000). I don't understand what they are or why they are located in $HOME.

~/.deps/... with 192 files of type .Po and .Plo, all related to HPCUPS.

I didn't recall HPCUPS package dependencies folder being there. Are those files supposed to live there (which would mean, that I had not noticed them in the last few months) or is it the result of an akward install ?

~/.chewing/uhash.dat containing something that looks like ... well ... something hashed, as in HLsQ (case, types and number of signs respected).

A www search gives me only very few hits on that one, every last one in Mandarin (a trifle odd), and from what I have been able to infer, it's got to do with either WinOS or with Lx gnome. I use unity rather than gnome and I have not booted WinXP in the past 9 months ...

I need help to determine whether I can safely get rid of those files.

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These particular folders and folders are probably not essential to your computer's day to day running, files in 'dot' folders of $HOME are for the most part related to user configuration rather than the running of the system. There are some exceptions but these do not appear to be those.

However to be totally sure back up the folders as follows:

mv -v ~/.deps ~/.deps_bak
mv -v ~/.chewing ~/.chewing_bak

Now one of 3 things might happen:

  1. Nothing at all will happen: after a while you can safely delete the folders and their contents
  2. The folders and their contents will be silently recreated: therefore you have demonstrated that you do need these folders

  3. An application will complain that configuration files are missing: you obviously need these folders which can then be restored as follows:

    mv -v ~/.deps_bak ~/.deps
mv -v ~/.chewing_bak ~/.chewing

This is a conservative but safe approach...

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  • Exactly what I did a few months ago. I eventually deleted those files. Yr answer is not useful to me anymore but it could be to someone else so I will mark it as accepted. Cheers-
    – Cbhihe
    Jul 15, 2016 at 6:56

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