What are these files in my Home Directory?

Question

I was cleaning up my home directory to free up some storage space, I came across these files are they safe to delete?

ubuntu64

ubuntu64.1

Ubuntu64.2

Ubuntu64.3

When you check the file properties it says 'debian binary package' total storage space they are taking up is 85 MB.

Answer 1

Those particular files do not appear to be on my installation, so I cannot tell you whether it's safe to delete them or not. That said, one easy way to determine the answer to this question would be to put them in a .tar archive, remove the originals, and see if anything breaks.

From Terminal:

1. Put the files into a Tarball archive:

   tar -cvf ubuntu.tar *bunt*
   

   ^{Note: *bunt* is used because Linux is case-sensitive and your file list contains file names that start with lower and upper-case characters.}
2. Remove the existing files:

   rm -f *bunt*
   

   ^{Note: There is no "undo" when issuing an rm command. Note that -f will limit the action to files in the current directory only.}
3. (Optional) Compress the tarball:

   gzip -9 ubuntu.tar 
   

   ^{Note: The -9 flag will use maximum compression and take a little bit longer. If you don't mind using an extra few megabytes of storage, you can leave out the -9.}
4. See what breaks over the next few days

So long as everything remains good, then you can delete the ubuntu.tar file that you created. If any application starts complaining about missing files, then you can restore the originals:

tar -xvf ubuntu.tar

^{Note: If you used gzip on the tarball, be sure to expand the file again: gzip -d ubuntu.tar.gz.}