[SOLVED] Reinstall vs other OS

Using Zorin 15 Core on a 80GB drive. Have Win 7 on a 120GB as secondary boot (almost never used now but I want to keep it).
My root partition free space has shrunk quite a bit, down to 1.9GB.
I'm open to a reinstall or a different Linux distro.

My small root partition space probably comes from my use of an old article to guide my setup: http://linuxbsdos.com/2012/07/23/dual-b ... -drives/2/

I'd appreciate any thoughts on whether I should reinstall Zorin (and any guidance on how to do so with a dual boot Win 7) OR go with another Linux package (and guidance on that). I've only used wine with one windows executable since install (~1+ month), hence I don't need strong ties to Windows.

I apologize if this is too general a question and will be grateful for any level of advice that you can offer.

Can you try

Code:

sudo du -ax / | sort -nr | less -S

to see what is hogging up space? It will take a while to run so some patience is required.
You can manually go through and see what is big and useless that you no longer need.

If you prefer to not do it manually (Which is more precise but a lot more time consuming), You can try System Janitors.
You probably have old kernels and such that needs cleaning out. Auto-remove kinda can help... But a deeper cleaning may be necessary.
Personally, I use Ubuntu Tweak on my Zorin 12.4 Core and it works perfectly on janitor portion. It has a section for kernels. I'm a bit goofy, I know. But it janitors good.
But you can try what System Janitor you like best.
I am not sure if GTKOrphan works on Zorin 15, but you might try that - install GTKOrphan and clean any orphaned packages.
Synaptic also has good functionality for cleaning and removing- but using that method is time consuming and tedious because you are manually scrolling through and seeing what you don't need.

I install a LOT of things in testing out many different packages in response to questions on this forum. Yet, I have never gotten the warning you speak of. I think this is because I am also a neat freak with my computer.I spend a lot of time sorting, straightening out and cleaning up. I also do regular checks and cleaning once a week even when I haven't tried to burn up my CPU and destroy my hard drive.

Any Distro you install-or any Windows OS- will have this issue. It's across the board. With Windows, however, it doesn't warn you of space reducing because it files differently, instead your drive just gets more fragmented, cluttered and slow. Any Distro, you'll have the same occur without maintenance and cleaning.

It may help you to have a smaller Distro since you have an 80 gig drive and also Windows on it. If you enjoy Zorin 15, I would suggest being a bit of a Tidy Bat for a short time until Zorin 15 Lite is available.
And if you have no qualms about doing a reinstall to adjust your root partition, I'd say Go For It. If it's not an issue to do it (Such as losing files, and data and having the hassle), making a fundamental change you prefer without loss AND having a clean fresh start is a fine thing. But if you prefer to avoid reinstalling, regular cleaning and maintenance may help.

You should always use the 'something else' method where you partition your drive manually. Before you attempt a reinstall do you boot into GRUB? If you would prefer to have the choice of Windows first you need to make a repair disc from Windows 7 to get your mbr back. You could then use the Matthew Moor unconventional method of dual-booting which I created an instructional video on here with Zorin 9 - the same would apply for the current version of Zorin:

https://vimeo.com/110085401

You should have a minimum of 15 Gb - I would go for 20 Gb for '/'.

Here would be by description:

1. Delete your Zorin install (but not before creating the Windows 7 repair disc!)

2. Create a Primary partition of 512 Mb and mark it as '/boot' formatted to Ext4 - this is where GRUB is going to get placed on new install

3. Create 20 Gb partition, formatted to 'Ext4' and mark it as '/'

4. Create an extended partition after '/' partition and in that at the END of the extended partition, create linux swap/swap area of double your RAM.

5. The space to the left of swap, mark as '/home' formatted to 'Ext4'

6. When you install Zorin you will need to highlight the '/' partition and format it once more and identify that as where you are gong to install. At the bottom of the installer screen, install GRUB to the '/boot' partition.

7. Reboot into Windows (assuming you have used repair tool to get mbr back by bootng repair disc, selecting repair and open the Console/DOS prompt for advanced options. Select 'C:\' drive and enter:

bootrec.exe - fix:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/hel ... tup-issues

Then once in windows navigate to NEOSmart technologies and download there smart bootloader as shown in the video I gave the link to.

Just to add if there is specific software that need Windows 7 you can't live without, when support has ended, provided you have install media and the Certificate of Authentication key you could run Windows 7 as a VM using Virtual Box - I already do this with a 32-bit version of 7 on another OS and come January next year my Windows 7 64-bit will be running inside Zorin 15.

Thanks, guys.
@Aravisian - I don't install too many items and uninstall often as needed. The 80GB drive is for Linux alone. Win 7 sits on a separate 120GB drive. I have two other drives of a few TB that I use for storage only which is why I don't use up much space on either of my OS drives. Copies come out of storage and get deleted when not needed. Any new data gets kicked to storage once I'm done with it. Finally, the reason I am considering reinstall is because of the prior reasons, I don't let my OS drives bloat and so it is not a pain to wipe them clean as long as the reinstall isn't too long (which in the case of Linux is not, Windows would be a nightmare).
On to the recommendations, I ran the terminal command and am posting partial output:
*****
5933880 /var
5232856 /usr
4731084 /var/lib
3922264 /var/lib/snapd
2450760 /usr/share
2311380 /usr/lib
1523568 /var/lib/snapd/snapshots
1482900 /var/lib/snapd/snapshots/7_cnctsun_1.0_59.zip
*****
CNC Tiberian Sun was uninstalled some time back and it still has junk left over. Even in the /var/lib/snapd/snapshots alone it has a 1.5GB file sitting there. WTH?

I installed and ran GTKOrphan with the options checked to remove all orphaned files, not just in lib folder. I'm still at 1.9GB free space on root.

Incidentally, Swarfendor's mention of a 15GB to 20GB root folder makes me less likely to do a reinstall since my root folder is 14.7GB in size. So, it is reasonably sized but something is clogging it up (likely, that leftover game). But I'm not smart enough to figure out if I delete the right files manually.

@Swarfendor - Thanks for the detailed walkthrough. I think I should be good because I used easyBCD in Win 7 to add Zorin to the boot order (and make it primary). I'm guessing that means my MBR is fine and not GRUB dependent.

In sum, would either of you have thoughts on how to manually comb through the folders and not screw things up? Thanks again.

I noticed that snap came through on an update recently - try reinstalling CNC with that and then uninstalling it using this guide:

http://tipsonubuntu.com/2018/12/16/inst ... -via-snap/

Thanks.
I had wine platform 3 installed before. Just now, given the link you cited, I removed it and installed version 4. Then ran CNC reinstall. Its taking its usual time downloading everything so its gonna be a while. It didn't even run the last time I installed it and so I uninstalled. I'll let you know how it pans out either way but if the game works I'm gonna be forced to play it a bit before uninstalling.

PS - Doing everything using the software manager option rather than through the terminal.

Had to cancel - root shrank to 1.3GB. Uninstalled CNCTSUN and root free space still at 1.3GB.

Some useful tips here:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/57994/r ... e-up-space

Thank you. I used some of those commands and they helped. Comes back to Aravisian's manual method which seems to be the way to go.
The one that was really good was the sudo find / -size +1G command. Pointed to the same CNC file. I deleted it manually. Now I have 3.4GB free on my root

Then I changed it to scan only my linux drive and used sudo find / -mount -size +100M. It gave me some results that I'd like your opinion on:
/usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2
/usr/lib/firefox/libxul.so
/var/lib/clamav/daily.cld
/var/lib/clamav/main.cvd
/var/lib/snapd/snaps/gnome-3-28-1804_63.snap
/var/lib/snapd/snaps/vlc_1049.snap
/var/lib/snapd/snaps/gnome-3-28-1804_67.snap
/var/lib/snapd/snaps/wine-platform-runtime_23.snap
/var/lib/snapd/snaps/p7zip-desktop_220.snap
/var/lib/snapd/snapshots/15_cnctsun_1.0_59.zip
/var/lib/snapd/cache/4ce2f123306ec9dc733b082596faa97241d9e9974a0e1145bdf0a4621911b5711ce62cc5bf8197fa7788b75f2030580b
/var/lib/snapd/cache/61d9b303cb1a2fef0f5e548f321a0ccb1ddb5900cd891afad3bb00624971a10b7df945fdda809f103ce62769d9c64fc5
/var/lib/snapd/cache/c258437068b709c9b404e3b7d527889929f29cc3e9e0c69d2c9432a9f3746f60028fb7aa91d6fef06765c284376bbb3d
/var/lib/snapd/cache/c8899746a4dd269a19355b70ae510cfc34ea9ee17b2fb76345bc65513b061d85035ef80a4206285f9d6b0862e807040f
/var/lib/snapd/cache/a20a98b5ac1d7e38f649e800a69a66e5c1d0dd60d7dde3463bb3e879ad498467bf1fede9edcc8e00192975ea173f0ffd
/var/lib/snapd/cache/cc8defdd3989ffbc6891f11f7d6f94d20e8c0db074f57036f6db93169af135d01d5affd5af090a78a01065ab053ee719

Can I remove these files (which ones)? Interestingly, I am no longer allowed access to /var/lib/snapd/snapshots/

I backed up my bookmarks and some minor files, so if Linux crashes, I'm fine with having to reinstall.

It's like Roomba Automated vacuums. They kinda work okay, but nothing beats rolling up your sleeves and doing a job well done.
Most people prefer a GUI with Click and run. I prefer doing things manually. It's more time consuming, but you get a chance to familiarize yourself with and learn the system, take control and do it right. Manually cleaning allows you to examine the packages and make decisions about what needs to go, whereas an automated GUI only looks for broken or incomplete installations. Sometimes, you have an unbroken complete install you forgot and you never use it and it just gotsta go... There's something very satisfying of getting it done, then examining a clean running system after. It was YOUR effort, not some pre-pacakged doodad that did it.
It always helps to clean the cache, the cnctsun you know about... I'm not sure if the others are snap Installation files or not.
SWARF!?

Thanks again to both of you. I checked my root space - 4.1GB. That's good enough for me so I'm done with my witchhunt.
Appreciate your patience and help. And I rebooted and checked my access - I can access snapshots subfolder again. But I'll leave the couple hundred meg sized files alone, don't need to go after them.

SWARF!?

You're last appeal for my opinion in your last post got me to thinking - swarf' whilst being an abbreviation of my callsign could be a good name for a 's**tty files cleaner' app!