klean sweep

What was the reason you installed KleanSweep? Was there a particular thing you wanted it to do?

From the KleanSweep homepage, it can clean out the following:
    * empty files
These are files with 0 length i.e. no actual content. It is possible that some application uses a zero-length file as a kind of "flag" to indicate something (well, maybe) in which case deleting it would unset the flag. On the other hand, empty files take up very little file space so if they're not bothering you, why bother them?

    * empty directories
An empty directory is one with no files or directories in it. Do you have many of these?

    * backup files
Backup files are often created by editors (e.g. gedit Text Editor) and are prefixed with the tilda ~ character. There is usually only one backup file per edited file i.e. it's not like you have a full version history or anything. You can delete these if your happy that you don't need the back up I guess.

    * broken symbolic links
"Symlinks" are links to files or directories, and act (almost) just like the files and/or directories they point to. In the file manager they have a little arrow on them. Broken symlinks have just lost their "other end" i.e. they don't point to anything any more. You can probably remove them, but it might be more useful to find out where the "other end" went first.

    * broken executables (executables with missing libraries)
I don't know about this one. Not sure how they do their "missing library" test. I wouldn't use it, personally.

    * dead menu entries (.desktop files pointing to non-existing executables)
Oh yeah, go for it! If you have any menu items which don't work any more this will clean them out. Of course, most applications should remove their own menu item when they are uninstalled.

    * duplicated files
It may be useful to see which files are duplicated, but I don't think I'd delete them.

    * orphaned files -- files not found in RPM (for rpm-based distros, e.g. Fedora Core, Suse) or DPKG (for dpkg based distros, e.g. Debian and Ubuntu) database
I probably wouldn't do this, and certainly not on the home directory (since any files you have created will, of course, not by in the software database).

    * obsolete thumbnails (thumbnails conforming to freedesktop.org standard, pointing to non-existing images)
You can probably do this without fear too.

Really, I think the question is: why? If you have a good reason to clean stuff out then you probably know what it is you want to clean out ... right?

being a newb i have hits and misses on trying to install programs through the terminal. some of them have to be done this way, such as awn, and others as well. i just wanted to try and clean up some of the mess i might have made while fumbling through installing stuff.

My suggestion is to not use it if you are not sure.I used it and thought I knew what I was doing. Had to reinstall. I clean out my cookies and cache everyday. If you havent done in a while it will get rid of a lot of mb's. There are settings in synaptic package maneger that you can use to clean cache and other settings.

how do you open synaptic package manager

System --> Administration --> Synaptic Package Manager

Thanks Dave Stroud, that solved my question.