Trash and Hornet's Nests - Cleaning logs and expendable data with BleachBit

Trash and hornet's nests...

When you are tasked with finding, interrogating, and punting unnecessary data from a computer system, the above phrase describes the ever growing phenomenon you deal with. With OS developers serving as the alpha dogs, myriad programmers with a notepad program and a compiler take the alpha dog's cue and run with it, adding ever more reams of data-cruft to our hard drives.

One of my new favorite toys is a program whose sole existence is to provide a standardized tool for dealing with a computer's honey holes of trash and other un-needed data. A link to BleachBit turned up in my inbox, and as of late I've been discovering it to be very capable. It not only will allow Windows users to target this unwanted data; but Linux users can also enjoy purging made easy.

Select targets in the left pane, and read what damage trash wrought in the right.

The program has a number of features that look to be just right for continuous enjoyment.

Trash is addressed by use of a mark-up code that is easily understood by anyone who has ever worked with web page and similar mark-up. Known as Cleaner Mark-up Language (CleanerML), it is XML-based and looks near enough to what you might put in a web page. Objects, whether internal file data structures (Windows registry, SQL databases, etc.) or files themselves, can be located and addressed using CleanerML, and the data viewed or purged. Disk and file content can also be overwritten to avoid recovery. Because the mark-up is open source, you can freely share it, as can others, and all parties enjoy the benefit in doing so.

The program comes with a number of cleaners files which provide the program with the ability to cleanse specific application/process data, or collections of such objects once installed. Sample files are also included. But reading the documention/help on the web site allows you to sample from a treasure trove of shared cleaning code that BleachBit can use and to learn how to roll your own cleaner files.

Adding and removing cleaners is as simple as copying or deleting files from a centralized folder where all cleaner mark-up files are kept. If you feel any cleaner offers too much or too little to be purged, a simple text editor allows you to customize any to your liking, if you have that sort of initiative. This can also be done to nibble down the selectable cleaners and their functions in the left pane so that only relevant cleaners to your specific system are made available.

As many can appreciate, such a publicly and freely accessible/extendable tool is what makes a good tool great. I have only touched on it's features. There are many more. You may find me posting a few additional cleaners of my own for use with BleachBit in the near future when I get around to it. In the meantime, visit the site, and enjoy. Be sure to check the documentation/help pages to find additional cleaners including Winapp2_ini and how it's used with the program. That alone will add hundreds upon hundreds of accessible cleaners to your installation.