Here’s a great tip for netbook users and those with limited disc space: automatically delete downloaded update packages after they’ve been installed.
Default hoarding
By default Synaptic keeps every downloaded update packages in a cache. This is especially useful for providing the ability to revert back to a earlier version of an application and for the ability to remove and reinstall applications without having to re-download the entire package again….
What if you don’t do either of those? Well you end up with a giant cache full of .deb files that can swell to several GiB’s in size.
Free up some disc space by setting Synaptic to automatically delete said packages after installing them.
- Open Synaptic Package Manager (System > Administration > Synaptic package manager )
- Open the preferences dialog via Settings > Preferences
- Choose the ‘files’ tab
- Check ‘Delete downloaded packages after installation’.
- Click ‘Apply’ followed by ‘Ok’.
