Duplicate files

[Eberhard Roloff]

Steven Vollom wrote:

> I just opened filelight; it is fasinating.  Some areas occupy as much as 
> 6gb of data, but how do I learn what is relevant and needs to be kept 
> and what is either no longer needed or redundant or saved for purposes I 
> do not require?  When I google something like, /var, I get a rather 
> basic understanding of what it is, but whether it is necessary to the 
> continued function of the computer is not mentioned.  I don't even know 
> what temporary files should be retained; can they all be removed, or by 
> having them do they save time when you may need  them again?

Dear Steven,

great to hear from you!

My advise is pretty simple:
Do not mess around with your system! You need to explicitly know or 
google anything that you think you could delete on your system partition 
before doing it!!!!

The exception to the rule could be your /temp directory. Should this be 
full of dead bodies, you can delete them.

Tools like filelight on the one hand and kleansweep on the other are 
very handy to find out about your own data and what space it occupies. 
So run it on your /home directory or on other directories where you 
store your own data.


Kind regards
Eberhard