How to see what installed packages I have never used for cleaning purposes

I want to do some clean up and was wondering how can I see what packages I have never used or has been very long since I used them.

Solution 1:

UnusedPkg: A Tool to Search the Oldest Unused Packages in Ubuntu From Terminal

UnusedPkg sorts and lists down the oldest unused packages. The sorted list is displayed with the size, package name and number of days the package has been idle for.

With the help of the list , you can determine the packages that are unnecessary and needs to be removed from the system. You can download its .tar.gz package from the download link given at the end of the post.

To install the UnusedPkg in Ubuntu, extract the downloaded package archive and obtain the unusedpkg folder. Then, move the unusedpkg shell script inside that folder to /usr/bin/ folder.

If you don’t have the root access, you can run the script from the unusedpkg directory only.

Once installed, you can run the tool by running following commands in the terminal.

unusedpkg

Warning: To avoid any problem, before uninstalling or removing any package, you have to manually check its timestamps using unusedpkg info or manually with ls -alu

Download UnusedPkg

Solution 2:

That is a great question.

This is a sort of work around rather then an answer, but, ...

In my experience, it is easier to start with a minimal installation and build up rather then to try to remove things from a standard Ubuntu desktop installation.

There is a bit of a learning curve to either method as removing packages can result in a broken system and either way you will need to learn what packages you use and what their dependencies are, as well as what is part of the "minimal" core.

See:

Ubuntu Minimal CD

Ubuntu wiki low memory systems

Ubuntu packages ubuntu-minimal

Solution 3:

gtk-orphan has a nice interface to find orphaned packages. Great for cleaning up additional packages that were installed automatically and also for seeing extra software you have installed.