As we use Ubuntu 20.04, it gets loaded with unnecessary packages and other useless files that only take up space on the hard drive. That’s why there are tools that help us keep Ubuntu 20.04 clean. One of these tools is Bleachbit, a very powerful and simple tool.
What is Bleachbit and why use it?
Every operating system is filled with unnecessary files that affect its performance. These not necessarily malicious files become a burden on modern operating systems. This is why Bleachbit has been created.
Bleachbit is an OpenSource application that is a system cleaner. It is free and above all protects the privacy of our system by not tracking any data. It is available for both Linux and Windows and features a simple and well laid out graphical interface, where everything is well placed.
With Bleachbit we basically can:
- Free disk space
- Reduce the size of backups and the time to create them by removing unnecessary files
- Improve system performance (by vacuuming the Firefox database, for example)
- Prepare whole disk images for compression (common for “ghost” backups and virtual machines) by wiping free disk space
On the other hand, some of Bleachbit’s features are
- Delete your private files so completely
- Simple to use
- Free of charge
- Free to share, learn, and modify (open source)
- No adware, spyware, malware, backdoors, browser toolbars, or “value-added software
- Frequent software updates with new features
So as you can see it is a good idea to do Bleachbit cleanups on our system.
Keep your Ubuntu 20.04 clean
The first thing we have to do is install Bleachbit on Ubuntu 20.04 using the following command
sudo apt install bleachbit
When the installation is finished you will see two launchers, you have to execute the one with root permissions.
If you run Bleachbit you will see the following screen which are the options of the application. There’s nothing to touch in the options, but you can always access them from the menu.
The user interface is quite clean and simple.
On the left side, you can see all the cleaning categories you can do, like APT, Bash, System, and so on.
All of them are important and I proceed to explain them quickly:
- APT: Here you can remove unused, old packages and the APT cache.
- Bash: You can choose the history of bash.
- Deep Scan: Temporary files, thumbs, and so on.
- Journald: Clean the journal from the system.
- System: Here you can delete cache, free space, trash, memory, registers, and so on.
Doing this periodically will help the system a lot and increase its performance.
All you have to do is select what you want to clean. When you are ready, you can preview the cleaning. This will run Bleachbit in Dry mode and see what is going to be done.
Now, when you are ready, you can start the process for good and you will have to confirm the process.
And yes, it’s that easy.
Conclusion
Keeping a clean operating system is an important part of using it because that way we can be agile at work.
On Windows, there are many free or paid tools with dubious advertising, but on Ubuntu, we have Bleachbit which is very simple and easy to use.
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