this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023

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Reminder to clear your ~/.cache folder every now and then (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Zangoose@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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A screenshot of a file manager preview window for my ~/.cache folder, which takes up 164.3 GiB and has 246,049 files and 15,126 folders. The folder was first created about 1.75 years ago with my system

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[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (5 children)

This particular folder caches many things from various package managers. Won't hurt to clear, but will fill up again. Maybe consider not using caches when engaging such things.

[–] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Package managers don't use this directory as well as any other subdirectory of user's home.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Could have fooled me, because it's certainly the default for things like brew, flatpak, mpm, and pip. Looks like npm and maven use it on certain Debian based distros as well. I'm betting more of the immutable distros use that directory as well vs something in /var/cache.

[–] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago

Ah, sorry, I thought about system package managers like apt, dnf, zypper etc.

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[–] lntl@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

$ crontab -e

- - */2 * rm -rf /home/lntl/.cache

[+] Jinn@sh.itjust.works -56 points 11 months ago (23 children)

This is one of those things that makes me shake my head about Linux. It's these small dumb problems that make Linux inaccessible to the common person.

[–] TheWoozy@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

I've been running Linux as my primary OS since the late 90s and have never run into this problem.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world -2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The hate you're getting for this is so revealing and depressing. It basically proves you right.

To the haters: where is the factual problem with this personal opinion? Have you considered making a counter-argument instead, instead of simply lashing out with the downvote button like spoiled infants? This kind of tribal pile-on really pisses me off. You are literally censoring an opinion expressed in good faith - downvotes hide comments and reduce reputation. All while offering no rebuttal, no ideas of your own, nothing. Nice work.

[–] Jinn@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It is what it is. I've been involved in Linux communities long enough to know not to take stuff like this personally.

On Reddit we saw constant posts about why Linux isn't more popular but no one ever talks about all the dumb little issues that the distros have because of a slight lack of polish. Those little issues make the distros seem cheap compared to the polish of something like Windows.

I'm always amused at the replies I get with things like "When I had Windows it literally caused my CPU to burst in to flames and my SSD shot my dog. Now I'm running Arch and it showed me last night's winning lotto numbers."

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ha! Yes I agree completely with all of that.

And with your point here. In this world of pocket touchscreens and voice AIs, where young people don't even know what a file is any more, the geeks here are reminding each other to empty their .cache directory from time to time. I mean, do they have no self-awareness? Or perhaps they simply don't care if nobody chooses to use Linux. That at least would be coherent, but if there are no new users then eventually the whole thing will just die.

[–] Zangoose@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

IMO I'd say the same thing about windows's "Temp" folder though.

I agree that a lot of Linux isn't user friendly but I'm also on a distro that is specifically supposed to be customized from the ground up (arch-based) using a tiling window manager which also involves configuring most things from the ground up. This isn't a problem that most Linux users will likely have, but it is a problem that people may have if they are power users trying to have full control over their system (people who will be on a community about Linux). From what others in this thread have been saying, non-arch distros (and even arch with other aur helpers than yay) tend to have much smaller caches that get up to around 10Gb at most, which is also similar in size to what Windows's temp directory uses.

This is a Linux community on a FOSS platform. This community is inherently going to be filled with more "geeky" people. Isn't this what we signed up for? You make it seem like Linux was ever attracting people who weren't these type of people to begin with. Computer science is still a growing field, and most sane computer science curriculums involve using POSIX terminal commands and by extension linux at some point. I'm a zoomer and can confirm, we're not all as hopeless as you think we are. Linux will be fine even ignoring all of its corporate and government backing. And for people who don't even know what a file is, they probably won't know what Linux is in the first place. Even if they somehow have a system preconfigured with linux, their Ubuntu or Linux Mint install will probably be clearing the cache for them.

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