Brian:
To remove every package and the package lists in apt/archives:
apt-get clean.
The package lists are unaffected by the clean operation. You do not need
to run an update afterwards.
What's not generally known is that apt comes with a cron job that can
perform house keeping. It can be configured in apt.conf like this:
APT {
Periodic {
// see: /etc/cron.daily/apt
Update-Package-Lists "0";
Download-Upgradeable-Packages "0";
AutocleanInterval "1";
MinAge "3";
MaxAge "7";
MaxSize "1024";
}
}
See the comments in /etc/cron.daily/apt. As far as I am aware, that's
the only place where this is documented.
J.