Would LIke Automatic Clean and Autoremove

[NoWorries]

Over 15 years ago, my Son tried out Kubuntu and he came to grief with the root disk space for updated packages reducing his free root space. This made his system unusable. So he lost interest.

In the last year I installed Kubuntu Bionic on my neighbours spare desktop. I made separate partitions for / and /home. I made / 12GiB and today I found that there was 3.1GiB free space. I did a "clean" and "autoremove" which then gave 4.2GiB of free space.

For the sake of making Kubuntu user friendly, I would like to see some automatic action initiated when the root space gets below an acceptable level.

Have others had similar experiences with inexperienced users? Do you think this is a worthwhile approach to pursue further?

[claydoh]

12 gb is too small, generally speaking, so either a larger root partition, else not use separate partitions. Not sure if there is a file system or mechanism to easily, or automatically dynamically resize partitions in a user-friendly manner. 16gb is probably safer.

It is entirely possible to set this up, though:
https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/servergu...pdates.html.en

This is something Kubuntu cannot change, as the is at the Ubuntu level, so you'd have to lobby them.

I only ever saw this before Ubuntu started autoremoving old kernels some time ago (14.04-ish?), or using tiny root partitions, and I tend to have use small hard drives

[dibl]

Considering the current cost of hdd/ssd space, I consider time spent calculating and conserving disk space to be a waste. I routinely set the / partition to 20 or 25 GB, then make a data partition (NOT /home) and mount it on /mnt. Then /mnt/DOCS, /mnt/VIDEOS, /mnt/IMAGES, /mnt/MUSIC are symlinks in /home/user. This way, /home/user/downloads can grow for awhile, and periodically be cleaned out, and if you use the clean and autoremove options with apt once in awhile, you can use the system for years with no concern about the dreaded failure to load the GUI due to lack of disk space.

[whatthefunk]

Ive found that if you start to run out of space in your root partition, clean and autoremove really just prolong the inevitable. If you really want to clean up a disk, you need to go and clean out old programs and files.

[Qqmike]

I agree with the above, and something like dibl's strategy makes good sense. I will just mention Bleachbit, which cleans your system upon demand (K > Apps > System > Bleachbit), including (at your choice or not) Clean and Autoremove) ... mentioning this with all the usual caveats about using cleaning programs. In Windows, one has, for example, CCleaner. Well, Bleachbit is like CCleaner for your (K)Ubuntu.

[NoWorries]

While experienced users can easily free up the root partition, I would like it to be easy for a novice user to do it as well. If this can be done, this would help make Kubuntu more friendly to a wider audience.

To me the best place for doing this is in Discover. Surely an extra option could be added to Discover to check free root space and advise the user to use an option that would free up space.

I am not sure how to go about getting such an option added to Discover. If anyone thinks this is the way to go or if there is an alternative, I would be pleased to know.

[claydoh]

Muon and Synaptic have options for this.

Discover is not distro-specific (ie it works on non-Debian based distros, too) so I don't know how difficult it would be to implement, or if Kubuntu is keen to modify it (and thus have to maintain and support such a thing). I do know that it is NOT intended to be a package manager, so this may be outside of its intended mission. Of course, it would not hurt to ask for it

[jglen490]

On the other hand, the first time the OS "auto-deletes" a kernel that you wanted to keep, but were just experimenting with others, you'll wish you had not let the OS make a blind decision. We were all rookies at one time, and learned valuable lessons. Keep the clean-up process in human hands.

[oshunluvr]

Agree with all of the above.

My thoughts are 16GB is a minimal install, 20GB is average, 25GB should cover almost anything.

Of course I use BTRFS so this is no longer a question