Linux Command Line: cruft-remover

The word cruft in terms of computers, can have a couple of meanings. The first meaning is for software or code that is poorly written. The other meaning is for the accumulation of redundant, uncessary, or irrelevant information. The latter is applicable to the Linux command line application cruft-remover.

The cruft-remover application searches through your system to find anything that shouldn't be on your system. Cruft can include:

Packages that were installed because they were dependencies of another application but are no longer needed.

Packages that are no longer supported by the current release of the operating system.

In order to use cruft-remover you have to have root (or sudo) access.

The simplest usage of cruft-remover is:

cruft-remover [OPTIONS] ACTION

The possible options are:

• --all: Remove all pieces of cruft.
• --no-act: Do not actually remove anything. This is the best way to check your system for cruft without making any changes.
• --verbose: Print out descriptions of each piece of cruft found.

Actions are:

• find: This searches for cruft and prints a list of each piece.
• cleanup: This actually removes the cruft found.
• ignore: Mark cruft as "ignored" or "removable".

Let's say you want to first check your system for cruft but you do not want to take any action on any cruft found. To do this you could enter the command:

cruft-remover --no-act find

This would spit out something like this:

emovable deb:ooobasis3.0-testtool

removable deb:ooobasis3.0-writer

removable deb:ooobasis3.0-xsltfilter

removable deb:openoffice.org-ure

removable deb:openoffice.org3

removable deb:openoffice.org3-base

removable deb:openoffice.org3-calc

removable deb:openoffice.org3-dict-en

removable deb:openoffice.org3-dict-es

removable deb:openoffice.org3-dict-fr

removable deb:openoffice.org3-draw

removable deb:openoffice.org3-en-us

removable deb:openoffice.org3-impress

removable deb:openoffice.org3-math

removable deb:openoffice.org3-writer

removable deb:opera

removable deb:tuxcards

So let's say I want to remove the deb:opera cruft. To do this I would issue the command:

cruft-remover cleanup deb:opera

With the command cruft-remover will delete the cruft.

To remove all cruft you would issue the command:

cruft-remover cleanup --all

Some times you simply don't know how much data is on your computer that you no longer need. Having the cruft-remover application available to keep this task simple is a boon for users and administrators with systems that have seen heavy use or have been around for a while. Use cruft-remover to keep your Linux pcs free from unused or unwanted applications and libraries.