In aptitude I am certain to purge any packages that I am removing that I'm sure that I won't be using. I even do this on packages that will be automatically removed upon an upgrade. Every so often I use the Limit display option to search for removed but configured packages and purge those. Another tool is the deborphan package which will show packages that no longer have anything depending on them. Whenever prompted on whether to install the maintainer's version of a config file I check the differences and then install the new version and adjust it.
While the foregoing does a good job of keeping the system clean it doesn't help for the dotfiles. Applications seem to vary in their ability to deal with older versions of their config and sometimes very strange bugs/behaviors are the result. - Nate -- "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true." Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140929233024.gc4...@n0nb.us
