Debian/Ubuntu systems can accumulate a lot of cruft. Fortunately, it is quite easy to clean up your installed packages. Most people would probably be okay with this:<p><pre><code> aptitude markauto '~i!~M!~nbuild-essential(~E|~prequired|~sdevel|~sinterpreters|~slibdevel|~slibs|~soldlibs|~sperl|~spython)'
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You can then see which non-essential packages are installed with<p><pre><code> aptitude search '~i!~M!?essential'</code></pre>