/var/cache/apt/archives/

[Skydancer]

Greetings!
I wonder what is the purpose of /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory? It's full of DEB packages I've installed so far.

[kubicle]

Re: /var/cache/apt/archives/

By default, downloaded/installed packages are kept cached locally. You can, for example, download packages without installing, and install them later from the cache...or use the cached packages to install on other machines in the network without downloading etc.

These can take a bit of room, so if you wish to remove them, you can use 'sudo apt-get clean' and 'sudo apt-get autoclean' commands (autoclean removes redundant packages, clean removes all cached packages).

[Skydancer]

Re: /var/cache/apt/archives/

Thanks! That's exactly what I wanted to know. So there will be no harm if I wipe them off my system?

[kubicle]

Re: /var/cache/apt/archives/

So there will be no harm if I wipe them off my system?

No, if you need to reinstall those packages they will be downloaded again.

Sometimes it is a good thing to have an older package in cache when an upgraded package is buggy and the older (working) package is removed from the repositories, so you can easily revert to the working package (but this doesn't happen often and a fix should be available fairly quickly).