Home Folder is 40GB ??

[HLA91]

Hi all

I hope this is the right section

Today I entered

df

and noticed that my hard drive was 80% full. I checked my home folder and my files came to 7.3GB but when I viewed all hidden files it comes to 40.6 GB.
I realise they belong to programs but 33.3 GB ??? I have looked in applications and un-installed the programs I don't use but it doesn't seem to have made a dent in the size due to the program sizes being so small.
Short of re-installing is there anything I can do to clean my system up as it is only an 71GB drive, 54GB is used and 13GB free and its a bit cramped for my liking.

Many thanks

HLA91

[HLA91]

Sorry ran out of time to edit
I had a quick look around my home and one of the biggest folders is
.local which is 23.3 GB,
and a folder called
.Virtualbox which was 9.2GB
and I have un-installed virtual box (complete removal) so why has it left the folder behind?

Can someone please help me with these two folders as 32.5GB is being used here

Many thanks

HLA91

[sknake]

If you have uninstalled it then rm -rf the directory to erase the data and reclaim the hard drive space.

[HLA91]

Ok, I didn't know if it was safe to that's all, also the 23.3 was my recycle bin (oops) so I emptied it all.
I checked it all again and so far everything in my home folder including hidden files is 8.7GB and it reports that 22GB is being used of the HDD so that's 13.3 GB for everything else.
Is 13.3 about normal for a desktop system?

Thanks

HLA91

[jbennet]

Is 13.3 about normal for a desktop system?

Fairly okay.

Ad fresh install of ubuntu is ~3-3.5 gb and its about double that for fedora or similar

[HLA91]

Fairly Okay

Is there anything I can do that would really make a difference? I have already un installed the programs that I installed and don't use, the only programs left now to remove are the default programs that I never use and the only one I can see is evolution so that wont make much difference

[sknake]

No you should be good to go. Don't worry too much about harddrive space unless you're running out.

[jbennet]

Is there anything I can do that would really make a difference? I have already un installed the programs that I installed and don't use, the only programs left now to remove are the default programs that I never use and the only one I can see is evolution so that wont make much difference

Go to a terminal and type

df -H

for me please (case sensitive) and post the results here. Will give a breakdown in megs/gigs/percentages of what partitions and drives have what amount of free and used space.

You can also get tools to save space by deleting old log files and caches etc.... look up a tool called bleachbit. Works in a similar way to "ccleaner" on windows.

P.S Bear in mind that of your drive, a section (usually double your installed RAM) will be allocated as a swapfile.

default programs that I never use and the only one I can see is evolution

Keep evolution. Its a great email client and a lot of gnome apps rely on it.

[HLA91]

I installed bleachbit and it removed almost 1GB so that's good news, I normally used

df -h

so when I used

df -H

it showed my hard drive as 76GB overall capacity instead of the 71GB with

df -h

and all the man pages could tell me about teh capital H option was

-H, --si
likewise, but use powers of 1000 not 1024

I know its 1024 MB = 1GB but by using 1000 does that make it seem more or something, sorry numbers and me don't go well together so can someone clarify for me please?

HLA91

[jbennet]

Its just perosnal preference. I normally use -H to get it in the SI (metric) units because thats what HDD manufacturers use when labelling thier own hardware so it makes comparison between actual capacity and stated capacity easier.

I know its 1024 MB = 1GB

Sort of. Thats *technically* correct as its 8 bits in a byte. RAM manufacturers use this binary definition when labelling the capacity of thier products (the opposite of HD manufacturers).

The IEEE support the SI definition of 1000 per gb and proposed that the 1024 definition be referred to as a "Gibibyte" instead.