I recently checked the /usr/share/locale/ directory on my EOS installation. Its size is in excess of 700 MB. There are basically two options listed in the various threads to reclaim the space occupied by various locale.
Use the AUR package localepurge. This appears to be Debian port into Arch.
Use the command yay -S localepurge as given in this thread.
How can I reclaim space from the various different locales? Is there a mechanism to check how much size each locale is using? Is there any alternative apart from localepurge or using yay -S localepurge
If you remove most everything in that folder, you will see, most probably, the following when you update your system or perhaps even when you install a package. I find this much more disturbing than a few hundred MB space occupied on the disk.
checking available disk space...
warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/af/
warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/af/LC_MESSAGES/
warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/af/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo
warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/af/LC_TIME/
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/be/
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/be/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/bg/
warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/bg/LC_MESSAGES/
warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/bg/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo
warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/bg/LC_TIME/
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/ca/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/ga/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/gl/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/hr/
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/ja/
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/ka/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/kk/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/uk/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo
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warning: could not get file information for usr/share/locale/zh_TW/LC_MESSAGES/coreutils.mo
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So can AUR package localepurge be used safely on Arch based distros without any issue?
@cscs thanks for your responses on using NoExtract in pacman.conf
@cactux thanks for pointing out what would happen if I were to remove all the locales apart from my primary input language. It helps. I would have freaked out and would have dashed right into re-installation of EOS. That is something that I do not want to do.
I will have a look at ncdu.
Honestly, I havenât used this program and it was the first time I heard it being mentioned, so I donât know.
If I may give you my opinion, I think the whole thing would be too much work and hassle, removing the locales and then editing the pacman.conf file etc. for quite a little gain. A few hundred MB at max. I would just leave it and forget about it. But thatâs me.
Just had a lookâvery well done script! As long as this isnât âyay-ableâ (in the AUR, maybe?), could you add its GitLab link into the head of the file?
Reason being: I tend to collect such stuff, but it could get outdated quickly, and it would be beneficial to be able to find it again & check for updates after a few months passedâŚ
EDIT: Better even, put the link into its help, so we could Ctrl+Click it in a terminal and just jump there.
The perfect tool for for this job is bleachbit. I know that it is considered a no-no for various reasons but the way it handles locales is clever. The directory structure is left intact and a single .mo file left in each locale MESSAGES folder. This avoids the issues mentioned above.
Out of interest in a test vm with Cinnamon and minimal software installed it cleaned out :-
Disk space recovered: 485.1MB
Files deleted: 16880
On my normal running system I have seen this around the 800MB and 29,000 file range.
