Drive clean up question

[Lantesh]

I came across these instructions in an old Blog post.

"If you’ve installed a lot of programs from Synaptic, you may want to get rid of their installation packages. To delete the installation packages, or .debs, open up a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) and enter the following: sudo rm -f /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb"

I was not aware that a copy of the a .deb package was kept in the system after installation through Synaptic. After seeing this I took a look in my /var/cache/apt/archives directory, and there were no .deb packages there (yes I enabled hidden files). I decided to run the command just to see what would happen, and absolutely nothing happened. So what's the deal here? Do other distributions keep .deb packages, and Mint doesn't? Thanks for any insight into this.

[Fred]

Lantesh,

You know, that is a good question. I know they are being kept because I can reinstall a recent package without internet connection activity.

I know you can clear dead wood from the file tree with:

sudo apt-get autoclean

And you can clear the cache, where ever it is stored with:

sudo apt-get clean

Fred

[Lantesh]

Fred,

Thanks for the info. I did some more digging and have still not been able to find where the cache is kept. I also tried the APTonCD utility to see what .deb packages were in the cache, and APTonCD doesn't show any packages, so I'm thinking my system doesn't have anything in it's cache. This seems odd to me. I'm wondering when I ran that other command if it did indeed clean everything out. Like I said nothing happened in the terminal. I got no confirmation that anything was cleared, and I saw no files in the particular path folder that command targeted. I've also never run the commands you've listed. Ultimately what I'd like to do is backup all the .deb packages using APTonCD, and then clear the cache. I am thinking however that I have no cache to clear. I can only imagine that at some point I somehow cleared it without knowing it.

[Fred]

Lantesh,
I had nothing in my cache either, but I use the clean command when I have made a bunch of changes to keep from loading my system up with junk. So that doesn't tell us much.

Fred

[Lantesh]

Fred,

Yeah I just ran the autoclean command you listed to see what would happen and I definitely got results with that. If anyone else has any further information on .deb package cache storage post up and let us know.

[Lantesh]

Ok I found out why I had no .deb files in cache. There is a setting in settings/preferences within synaptic package manager where you can either enable or disable whether or not synaptic keeps .deb packages after installation. See the illustration below.