SystemClean: A Simple Script to Clean Your Ubuntu Linux and Apps Temporary Files!

Just like with any other operating system with GNU/Linux, we also gotta do some application and other temporary files cleaning from time to time. And sometimes even after removing an app in say Ubuntu (in this case) some of the installed dependencies might not be removed automatically by the package manager for various reasons.

Although if you know your way around "apt-get" ;-) then you can do some house cleaning manually ... but what about cleaning the Firefox, Google Chrome or Chromium web browser cache or removing temporary "left-overs" of many other applications in Ubuntu?.

Well you can use the famous (and excellent) Ubuntu Tweak utility (which is more than a "temporary file remover") for instance. But would you like something that's pretty darn small in both size and system resources + would let you do those things pretty much automatically??, heck ya you would :D.

There is such an excellent application, a (Nautilus Script actually), it's called SystemClean. It's like few kilobytes in size and once installed lets you do things like...

*. Remove application "left-overs" as mentioned above via "apt-get" package manager such as - Auto remove, clean its cache (you know downloaded package cache, don't worry it won't un-install anything), remove broken packages lists, etc.

*. Remove un-needed files (referring to the temporary folder in my case, but perhaps it may remove others .. so be careful).

*. Remove Memory Cache (the developer himself has added a warning for this, so again use it at your own risk).

*. Clean the Trash.

Or if you didn't choose any of those options (didn't click on any "check boxes) but click on the "OK" button then you'll be taken into another window that lets you clean cache of a huge list of apps such as -

Chromium, Firefox, Pidgin, Compiz, LibreOffice, Google Earth, OpenOffice (what's that! :P), Miro (excellent multimedia player), wallpaper cache, Seamonkey (a powerful Internet application "suite"/collection), Nautilus thumbnails (7 days old), Clementine (a music player)... are just a few to mention!.

*. It also gives you a report afterward concerning what it did and how many space it recovered, etc. 

How to install it in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal? (might also work in 10.10, 10.04 or other versions)

Well, we gotta install it manually since there are no PPA s at the moment but the installation is pretty much simple and does not require any other dependencies (in my Ubuntu Laptop anyway).

1. First download it from here.

2. Now extract the content, say to your desktop.

3. Then open your Terminal and change your directory to the extracted directory.

4. Now, enter the below command (use "sudo" if you want it to be installed for everyone).

/.setup

OR

After extracting it you can open that folder in Nautilus file manager and double click on the file called "setup" and when asked simply choose "run in terminal". That should also do it if you don't like to play with the command-line that much :).

Then as shown in the below screenshot you'll be asked to choose your Language and simply click the "OK" button and you're done!.

How the heck can I launch it?

Simple. Just right click on your desktop and from the menu (below screenshot) choose: "Scripts" -> "SystemClean".

Although I'm not entirely sure why, but it says that you should have an Internet connection to run it but I did run it without any Internet connection and it worked just fine. Enjoy and a again, a big thank to the developer for this amazing little script :).