Maybe a best practices question?
Windows had add/remove. It kept the crap off and the OS nimble (in theory).
Lately in Budgie my update package count is getting higher and higher. I looked and realized I had a lot of stuff I played with once. (I don't even remember installing Plank!)

Is unused stuff personal preference? Are there potential performance issues related to leaving the debris around? Or is keeping the OS thin and nimble the best practice? Or does any of this matter? I guess this is also a linux architecture question in relation to WIN and clutter.

Not pressing, thank you for any info. One of those weird computer things that get stuck in my mind...

Personal preference I believe. I doubt there's any noticable difference if you removed the "clutter". If the amount of updates is an issue I'd suggest having a look through eopkg history, it's a good way to catch things that like you said you installed to test out, but no longer need.

    Justin Thank you. No harm then. Eopkg history is an interesting log. I like it better than "installed" in the SC because it's thorough.
    I've been spending more time than I've kept track of in your scientific educational software section the last couple months. Things like Celestia, goldendict, stellarium, and kstars have a visible dependency footprint but I love them. Was also worried I had too many icon packages laying about that I will never ever use. Etc...

        brent Scientific packages will certainly take up space (as will icons) on your drive, but if drive space isn't an issue then I wouldn't worry.

          You can also try sudo eopkg rmo

          Thank you both. RMO has come in handy.
          OCD side of me says get rid of everything you use less than once a month. Another side says "but you don't really need to remove it."
          Ah, our inner dialogues...

          If you'll use it again, keep it...it isn't costing anything 🙂

            dbarron Unix/linux is an architecturally different animal than WIN then. With WIN you are led to believe too much debris/installs affected performance negatively, and I believe it did. Here I'm getting the feeling it doesn't matter, hence your "it's not costing anything." That's what I really wanted to know: the cost. All the answers I'm getting are "negligible" so I got the peace of mind now.

              Removing orphans, removes clearly needed stuff like apparmor, fonts and some libraries. Would not recommend it

                Strictly speaking it has a very very minor cost in searching directories for executables and libraries, but that is SO minuscule that it hardly bears mentioning. If you run a fsck it will take longer, but how often does that happen and longer is also not very long 🙂

                  dbarron That makes sense with the additional indexing, but like you say, minute. Thanks for the extra insight.

                  Thanks to all responders.
                  I got the knowledge I needed and question is answered. Solved and done, I believe.

                    Tourette I've used rmo twice after removing a few packages with no--I believe--repercussions. But I can see not making a habit of it...