So I'm poking around with mc, and happened across /var/cache/apt/archives which has a LOT of *.deb files in it, and which seems to include many versions of the same package, some of them many years old, going all the way back to 2013. I guess I've been running debian a little longer than I'd thought...
Is it okay to just delete older versions of these files? Or should I be doing something using one of the package management tools? I've mostly used synaptic, but am also aware of apt-get, apt, aptitude, and am not real clear on their comparative capabilities.
I'm looking at over 7500 files amounting to over 9.5GB.
I also see /var/cache/dictionaries-common, which appears to be tied to a spelling checker, which I don't use here. And /var/cache/samba, which I also don't use -- there isn't a windoze machine around here at all.
What's the best way to get all of this excess stuff out of the system?