Deleting files without using the trash bin on an Ubuntu operating system

The trash bin on an Ubuntu operating system, and many other operating systems as well, is a desktop feature, that some users will find usefull upon accidental deletion of files. However, the trash bin uses a number of hidden directories in order to work. These makes a mess and takes up space on file systems. These hidden directories can also be a security problem because they can contain private files.

The solution is to enable the desktop delete feature.

Press Alt and F2. Run gconf-editor. Open apps, nautilus and preferences. Find enable_delete and set it. Close the dialogue. That’s it. We can now right click a file and delete it.

Note, that secure remove (srm) should be used to delete private files.

The delete function in most operating systems simply marks the space occupied by the file as reusable (removes the pointer to the file) without immediately removing any of its contents. At this point the file can be fairly easily recovered by numerous recovery applications. However, once the space is overwritten with other data, there is no known way to recover it.

srm is a secure file removal utility for Unix and Unix-like computer systems, such as Mac OS X or Linux respectively. It is a command line utility which exercises the Gutmann 35-pass algorithm for secure file deletion.