I recently decided it was time to clean up my Debian Trixie system. It was sitting at 1005 GB used (59%) on a 1.8 TB drive. After a focused cleanup session, I brought it down to 649 GB used (38%) — freeing 356 GB.
Here’s exactly what I did:
Major Space Hogs Removed
| Item | Space Freed | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Kimi-K2.5 GGUF Model | 224 GB | Single massive 5-part model file |
| Docker images, containers & volumes | ~42 GB | docker system prune -a –volumes |
| Parrot OS VMware VM | 40 GB | Unused VM |
| Old Linux ISOs (Oracle, Kali, Arch, Parrot) | ~30 GB | Old installation media |
| CSI Linux zip files | 21.5 GB | Large forensic tool archives |
| Unneeded PortableApps | ~4.5 GB | Chrome, Opera, Firefox, LibreOffice portable versions |
| Old snaps + apt cache | Several GB | Initial cleanup |
Total Freed: ~356 GB
Final Status
- Before: 1005 GB used (59%)
- After: 649 GB used (38%)
- Free Space: 1.1 TB
Keeping It Clean Automatically
I set up two cron jobs so I don’t have to do this manually again:
- Weekly Cleanup (/etc/cron.weekly/) – light maintenance + Docker pruning
- Monthly Deep Cleanup (/etc/cron.monthly/) – removes old snaps, thumbnail cache, old kernels, and does aggressive Docker cleaning
Would you like me to share the full scripts in the comments?
Moral of the story: Even on a large drive, a few big files (especially LLMs, Docker, and ISOs) can eat massive amounts of space. A couple hours of targeted cleaning + automation makes a huge difference.
Has anyone else recently done a big cleanup on their Linux machine? What was your biggest space waster?