[ubuntu-in] Deleting contents of /usr directory - Implications

[Onkar Shinde]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Narendra Diwate
<narendra.diwate at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am just reading the latest DW weekly and in it a interview they say that
> deleting the contents of /usr directory will give the base system as was
> installed or something close to it.
>
> I just checked my /usr and ITS BIG. 1.8GB and 115000 files in it. I do not
> have too many programs installed, have only one user on the system and am
> very conscious of how much space my OS occupies. That is a lot of space.

You have Ubuntu desktop system installed right? That is approx 1500
packages installed. In terms of number of programs (apps/libs etc) I
would say that is at least 800.
1.8G is not 'a lot of space'. A desktop install for Ubuntu takes
around 2 GB total. Consider what all applications you get in base
install - browser, IM, email, media players, games, complete office
suite, CD/DVD burning tool, photo manager, scanning/printing out of
box, PDF reader, torrent client. Do you still think you are wasting
too much space? :-)
By the way, number of users does not affect the content in /usr. Users
have their own content in /home.

>
> What will happen if I decide to delete my the contents of the /usr dir? Now
> i know i will lose the user installed apps. What else will happen? Will the
> sys be still bootable and importantly usable?

bootable -> perhaps
usable (from a normal users point of view) -> no

/usr contains data related to almost 95% of applications. So if you
delete the content try imagining what will be state of the machine.
I am not sure why DW weekly gave advice about deleting the data form
this directory. By the way what is DW weekly?


Onkar