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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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A screenshot of a file manager preview window for my ~/.cache folder, which takes up 164.3 GiB and has 246,049 files and 15,126 folders. The folder was first created about 1.75 years ago with my system
Check which folder is the biggest. I am going to go on a lim and say it probably is being caused by file roller
Is it safe to clear ~/.cache/mozilla/ while Firefox is running?
Maybe not while it's running, but .cache is intended to be temporary files only so expecting files to permanently be there should be treated as a bug
I just map both the user cache and the /tmp directory to a RAM drive. I allocated 4 GB but in practice it never gets even close to that much, and Linux seems to not be reserving the entire 4 GB at boot so I would assume how much RAM is used depends on how much is actually in your cache.
It also defers cache and tempfile related problems to turning it off and on again.
This particular folder caches many things from various package managers. Won't hurt to clear, but will fill up again. Maybe consider not using caches when engaging such things.
Can hurt to clear, there's a lot more than just package managers using it
It's a cache folder. Created by the distro. They labelled it as such because it's cache, and can be considered ephemeral. It won't do any permanent damage to anything unless you've accidentally been using it for something else.
Package managers don't use this directory as well as any other subdirectory of user's home.
How?
Depends on the package manager. Check options for whatever you're running.