When you are running out of disk space on system, instantly you might use DU (Disk Usage) command to check the system disk usage but it wont give you info about cached data, internet history, and junk files usage.

To accomplish this, I would suggest you to install BleachBit System cleaner utility. Its best Alternatives for CCleaner in Linux and clean everything in your system in depth way.

What’s BleachBit

BleachBit is a free, open-source and easy to use disk space cleaner & privacy manager. It’s not only clearing a disk space apart from that it will analyze and delete junk files, temporary files, Browsers history, cache, cookies, shred temporary files, and logs you didn’t know where it is.

Suggested Read : Stacer – Linux System Optimizer and Monitoring Tool

Designed to work with Linux and Windows systems, also clean a thousand of applications such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, and more.

Suggested Read : Free Up Some Space in Ubuntu/LinuxMint With Ubuntu Cleaner (Fork of Janitor Module)

BleachBit system cleaner will remove the following junk files in Linux

Bash : Delete the command history

Delete the command history Deep Scan : Clean files widely scattered across the disk like, Backup files, .DS_Store, Thumbs.db, and Temporary files

Clean files widely scattered across the disk like, Backup files, .DS_Store, Thumbs.db, and Temporary files Email client : Delete the email client cache

Delete the email client cache Web browser : Delete the backup files, cache, cookies (which contain information such as web site preferences, authentication, and tracking identification), crash reports, DOM storage (HTML5 cookies), Download history, Form history, Passwords, Session restore, Site preferences, URL history, and Vacuum (Clean database fragmentation).

Delete the backup files, cache, cookies (which contain information such as web site preferences, authentication, and tracking identification), crash reports, DOM storage (HTML5 cookies), Download history, Form history, Passwords, Session restore, Site preferences, URL history, and Vacuum (Clean database fragmentation). Desktop environment : Delete the usage history & search history

Delete the usage history & search history System : Delete the cache, Clipboard, Custom, Broken desktop files, Free disk space, Localizations, Memory, Recent documents list, Rotated logs, Temporary files, and Trash

Delete the cache, Clipboard, Custom, Broken desktop files, Free disk space, Localizations, Memory, Recent documents list, Rotated logs, Temporary files, and Trash Thumbnails : Icons for files on the system & cache

Icons for files on the system & cache VIM Editor: Delete ~/.viminfo which includes file history, command history, and buffers

Delete ~/.viminfo which includes file history, command history, and buffers Package manager : Delete the cache and Clean database fragmentation to reduce space and improve speed without removing any data

Suggested Read : uCareSystem – All-In-One System Update And Maintenance Tool For Ubuntu/LinuxMint

Install BleachBit on Linux via distribution official repository

We can easily install BleachBit on major Linux distribution such as RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, LinuxMint, SUSE Enterpirce Linux, Mageia, Arch Linux & openSUSE from distribution official repository.

For Debian based systems, use apt-get or apt package manager to install BleachBit.

$ sudo apt-get install bleachbit

For RHEL/CentOS based systems, enable EPEL Repository and use yum package manager to install BleachBit.

$ sudo yum install bleachbit

For Fedora system, use dnf package manager to install BleachBit.

$ sudo dnf install bleachbit

For openSUSE system, use zypper package manager to install BleachBit.

$ sudo zypper install bleachbit

For Arch Linux based systems, use pacman package manager to install BleachBit.

$ sudo pacman -S bleachbit

Install BleachBit on Linux through deb & rpm file

Alternatively we can install latest version of BleachBit by downloading rpm & deb file from BleachBit website.

Refer RPM Package Manager & DPKG package manager for .dep & .rpm file installation.

How to use BleachBit ?

Launch the BleachBit system cleaner from main menu, you will get the default interface looks like below. It will popup with preference window and you can customize what you want.



See the BleachBit system cleaner interface.



Choose all the options to clean everything. When you choose Deep Scan, Firefox, & system will popup below warning messages.

Deep Scan will make this process bit slow due to clearing following files such as Backup files, .DS_Store, Thumbs.db, and Temporary files

Firefox option will warn you about deleting your saved passwords.

System also will make this process bit slow due to deep analysis of following options such as Free disk space, Localizations, and Memory.

Hit Preview button to know how much MB each options holding junk files.



Hit Clean button to start clearing the unwanted junk files and caches. It will ask your confirmation, before initiate a process (select Delete button). When you run the bleachbit as a normal user, you will get lot of error messages while cleaning system parameter.



Cleaning junk files under progress.



cleaning has been done and finally showing statistic about, how much disk space to be recovered and how many files get deleted in this activity.



For deep cleaning, including system junk files run bleachbit with sudo privilege.

$ sudo bleachbit

Follow the above steps after launching the bleachbit to clean junk files.

