No effect on /var/cache/apt/archives with remove or clean

I have been following your thread - well done having fixed it. You have hit the nail on the head:

**3. Make back-ups regularly. **

The majority, if not all, experienced users have a robust backup regime in place (this can be manual or automatic). Additionally many users separate the ‘system’ and ‘home’. E.g. install the ‘system’ in / and ‘home’ in /home - two separate partitions. This way, if the system fails it is much easier to re-install / and not touch /home. There are many ways to Backup (manually or automatically) and also laying out your system - start a new thread if you want to get some help/advice on these aspects. Please, put in place a good Backup environment.

Interesting and convoluted thread. Not easy when English is not your native tongue. Glad it all ended well. I have a suggestion: A simple and straightforward backup solution is QT-fsarchiver. Check it out.

As others have said, it is good practice to have your /home directory on a totally separate partition. It has always bugged me that no Linux installers do not suggest this at install time, it would certainly save a lot of problems particularly for novice users.
Link for QT-fsarchiver:
QT-fsarchiver

Let’s be a bit more clear here:

Whether or not /home is part of the root (/) partition or a separate partition is a matter of user preference. Some people really like it one way, some really like it the other, most (correctly) don’t much care.

Let’s avoid misleading a new user to go down a path that they do not currently have the skills to maintain. The Ubuntu developers set the default to be part of the root partition, and we do provide support for that common and popular configuration. If the user wishes to change it, they certainly can.

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@ian-weisser Sorry, I just believe you are wrong here. Having the /home directory under the root system is a recipe for trouble especially for new users.
We will have to disagree on this one Ian.

Hello again.
Interesting discussion for me.
I have been using Ubuntu since many years and totally rely on default. Yes, I partitioned
when installing on a new computer but only as a mean of structuring my data and no thought of what happens “behind the curtain”. After my recent mishap I have found that I must continuing diving into the system side. E.g. how does the tree structure look, and as a
consequence how to deal with it. Among others how to separate / and /home into different partitions? EFI has an own partition which the system created. I am grateful for all inputs, but I think I must find my Unix.bible and start studying.
How to find out what belongs to / and what to /home? Does not the / in front of home imply that it is under the /?

Sigh… but challenging