HELP: MX Cleanup

This application offers several easy cleaning actions to help increase and maintain free disk space.

Main tab

Select the cleaning actions you want, then click Apply. The selected actions run right away, and if a schedule is chosen they are also repeated automatically.

• Free Disk Space for User – choose the user whose files are cleaned with Select user.
• Clean Folders – cleans the user's Cache and Thumbnails folders, either files not accessed for a chosen time or all of them (potentially dangerous).
• Delete Logs – deletes old (rotated) logs, which end in .gz, .old or a number such as .1, or all logs. Logs older than limits this to logs older than the chosen age.
• Clear APT Cache – deletes old package files, which are ones that can no longer be downloaded from the repositories, or all cached package files.
• Clean Flatpak – removes Flatpak runtimes that are no longer used by any installed application.
• Empty Trash – empties the trash of the selected user or of all users. Trash older than limits this to items older than the chosen age.
• Purge residual configurations from removed packages – deletes configuration files left behind by packages that were removed but not purged.

Schedule

The default is No automatic clean. The other choices are At reboot, Daily, Weekly and Monthly. The schedule is saved when you click Apply.

Tools tab

Here you will find specialized tools that run once, when you click them.

Removal Tools

Remove unused WiFi drivers – removes out-of-tree (DKMS) WiFi driver packages that are installed but not in use, so they are no longer rebuilt every time a new kernel is installed. It covers the Realtek rtl8812au, rtl8814au, rtl8821au, rtl8821cu and rtl8821ce drivers and the Broadcom wl driver (broadcom-sta-dkms).

List and select kernels to remove – every kernel update leaves the previous kernel installed, so the space they use grows over time. This matters most when /boot is a small separate partition, as it is with root encryption.

The Kernel currently in use cannot be removed. It is good practice to keep at least one other kernel as a fallback.

Remove MX manuals for languages other than system default – frees the space used by MX manuals and FAQ files (PDF) in languages you do not need.

Graphical Tool for Analyzing Disk Usage

Clicking Run Disk Usage Analyzer starts Baobab, which shows a graphical map of the disk space in use. When it opens it asks you to choose a starting point: a single folder or a whole device.

It then shows a folder list on the left, sorted by the space each folder uses, and a rings chart on the right. The share of space used is shown as a percentage in the list.

Clicking a folder moves into it and refreshes the list and the chart. Hovering over a segment of the chart shows the folder or file it stands for and its size.

Right-click a folder to Open Externally (in the file manager) or Move to Trash.

A word of caution

There are other cleanup applications available in the repos, such as BleachBit, but these have a significant potential to damage a Linux system and should only be used by advanced users.