How does MX Cleanup compare to Bleachbit? [Solved]

[Markus85]

Hello,

I would be interested to know how MX Cleanup compares to Bleachbit.

Does one of the tools have more features than the other?

Does it make any sense to install Bleachbit on MX Linux, or would it cause any conflicts between the two programs?

[BV206]

Bleachbit has far more preconfigured settings for system and software packages that you can enable.

The biggest difference is Bleachbit can add custom folders and files to delete and custom whitelist folders and files that are not deleted, even in a folder where everything else will be deleted.

Bleachbit and MX Cleaner will usually not conflict. If one deletes files then the other won't complain when attempting to clean the same files that were already deleted and no longer exist. It can be a problem if you whitelist certain ~/.cache files with Bleachbit and then run MX Cleaner with Cache checked. It will delete all the cache files.

Bleachbit can do damage if you enable everything without knowing exactly what you are doing and don't preview before running it for the first time or after making changes.

[entropyfoe]

Also, there is a bleachbit as root option, this is much more dangerous, so don't do that !

[BV206]

It's not any more dangerous than deleting files yourself as root.

[Bartman]

If a users learns what each cleaning feature of Bleachbit does than a user shouldn't have ant issues.

I have been using Bleachbit just for browser cleaning and have never had any issues.

Don't haphazardly enable cleaning features and you should be fine.

[m_pav]

Bleachbit goes far further than MX-Cleanup does when removing cruft from a users homedir when its run as a user. BB starts out with an empty selection list, the user has to select the items they want cleaned. If one item requires root, then BB will show a bunch of red errors in the process window clearly stating no permissions.

To clean the item/s in the root only zone, you have to start BB as root, and that's where you need to use a bit of wisdom. Dangerous, possibly in a fools hands, but certainly not even close to dangerous in a careful users hands. It's kind of like driving a 1000+hp sleeper, nobody has to know it will knock the socks of anything that tries to take it on because most of the time, it will be operated in a sane manner. The power is there to get yourself a royal wreck and some jail time, but in the right hands, it is just fine.

Once configured, bleachbit is a dream to use, in fact, for me, it's a set and forget affair. My first run toook me the best part of 15 mins to work out as I "tested" its capabilities, but once set, it's a no brainer. Close all running apps to avoid getting file open errors, click the "clean" button and you're done, it's really that simple.

The way I use BB most times is with luckybackup, the terminal version of BB runs before my user data backup starts. I achieve this by adding bleachbit -c --preset into LB's Also Execute tab as per the following picture.


In my ~/.config/bleachbit/bleachbit.ini, the following are the "safe" cleaners I have preset for the systems I run. The list includes some kde elements because I use the likes of kdenlive and okular. These presets do not remove any passwords, history or cookies, I do that manually if I need to from within the browsers and if one of my machines does not contain an element that is in the list then it just passes over it and records an error in the log, which is insignificant for that machine because the item simply does not exist.

If you want to see how that looks like, create a new user account, log into it an open BB. Select a few items then close it and a new bleachbit.ini will be created for you in the new users /.config/bleachbit/ folder. Now rename that bleachbit.ini file to include .bak at the end, make a copy of it with the original name, and paste the contents of the tree section below, excluding of course the bracketed tree, and save the changes. Now open BB and see what is selected for cleaning.

Use this as you wish, it's unlikely to harm any critical or important user data and just so you know, I set up BB for windows users using the same types of selections and I have done so for many years without a single complaint. The customers come back, so that's gotta say it's a data and content safe recipe.

---- EDIT ----
Disclaimer !
The version below includes a line to retain the english locale. I do not say to copy this unless you're like me, where English is your only language. This field tells BB to retain the locale data for en only WHEN the option under system called localizations is selected. I used to use this a lot, but that is before the MX Locale app was developed. This line is however still very useful for other distros.

Code: Select all

[preserve_languages]
en = True

[tree]
deepscan.backup = True
deepscan = True
deepscan.tmp = True
firefox.cache = True
firefox = True
firefox.crash_reports = True
google_chrome.cache = True
google_chrome = True
google_chrome.session = True
kde = True
kde.tmp = True
konqueror = True
konqueror.cookies = True
konqueror.current_session = True
konqueror.url_history = True
libreoffice.cache = True
x11 = True
x11.debug_logs = True
thunderbird.cache = True
thunderbird = True
system = True
system.trash = True
system.clipboard = True
flash = True
flash.cache = True
flash.cookies = True
google_chrome.dom = True
firefox.vacuum = True
google_chrome.vacuum = True
kde.cache = True
thunderbird.vacuum = True
vlc.memory_dump = True
vlc = True
firefox.backup = True
firefox.dom = True
firefox.session_restore = True
google_chrome.search_engines = True
system.tmp = True

[Markus85]

Thanks to everyone who explained this to me. I think I understand now. Now I'm going to install Bleachbit and try not to mess up my system.

[oops]

FI : I use bleachbit as root sometimes (and as users too) with this config since many years without problems(until MX17). But not all must be checked.
... Usually I only use mx-cleanup.


bigger pic : https://i14.servimg.com/u/f14/20/40/85/94/bleach10.jpg