clearing disk space in CLI?

[sylvaine]

Whilst trying to get my GUI back, I got the error message "Keyboard initialisation failed. This could be a missing or incorrect setup of xkeyboard-config.", which google tells me means I need to free up disk space.

As far as I know, I need to use the rm command to do this, but how do I figure out which files to delete without my GUI? I'm deathly afraid that I'll delete something I need.

(Please bear in mind that I'm an utter noob when it comes to Linux.)

Comments

[vass]

man [command] gives you the instruction manual for a command. So man ls will tell you how to use ls.

Be very careful with rm. Read the manual first.

[vass]

Also: if it's in your filesystem (anything except for your home directory) then don't delete it.

[sylvaine]

Thanks for all the explanations on the commands & the advice! Unfortunately the disk that's full is the one mounted on /, and deleting files on /home didn't have any effect. I think I may have to go and get some IRL help with this, as it seems too complicated for me to deal with.