4. A Real Life Example

This is what I got applying the above procedure to one of my machines. Before the treatment, df reported I used 398,798 1024--blocks:

• I didn't remove the kernel sources and the kernel headers;
• I uninstalled several applications and all of the games, but I left X11, X11 development, C and Fortran development, Tcl/Tk, networking tools, and a few other standard applications. df reported 244,668 used blocks;
• I ran upx on /usr/bin, /usr/X11R6/bin, /usr/lib/texmf/bin/i586-linux, and /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-linux/2.7.2.1. 226,270 used blocks;
• I compressed the documentation under /usr/doc and /usr/lib/texmf/texmf/doc: 198,745 used blocks.

To sum up, I started with 398,798 blocks and finished with 198,745. Think of the stuff you can shove in those 200,000 spared blocks! I would have saved even more if I had used bzip2 instead of gzip.

On average, if you are careful from the beginning and install only the necessary applications, compressing executables and documents will save you some 20 Mb. On a notebook, this can be a lifesaver.