Bleachbit

System cleaner. FREE | GITHUB.COM/BLEACHBIT/ BLEACHBIT

Many people either stick with one Linux distro or change things up from time to time, but use the same /home directory on a separate partition each time. These users will probably know what it’s like to have lots of temporary files in their profile. Although you can always inspect and delete superfluous files by hand, there’s a simple GUI tool for this sideeffect known as Bleachbit.

The idea behind this program is similar to what CCleaner does for Windows. Bleachbit has a simple interface and practically foolproof, warning you about possible consequences when you activate certain levers and triggers on the left side of the window.

Bleachbit can also clean the Apt packages cache for the whole system and claw back some extra space on the root partition. The new 2.0 release features much-improved support for cleaning your Chrome and Chromium profiles (which tend to accumulate huge volumes of data after weeks of browsing), as well as a new feature for the secure deletion of SQLite databases. As before, Bleachbit is a perfect solution for cleaning up Firefox and Thunderbird caches, uninstalling unused localisation packages, and wiping out files such as Thumbs.db and .DS-Store.

You can also securely delete files with it. Bleachbit can be directed to shred files and overwrite free disk space with blank data in one pass, ensuring that it’s impossible to recover data using well-known tools such as Photorec or Testdisk. It should be the first choice for users who need to shred data securely, making them unrecoverable.