Apparently, Prism Launcher chose to adhere to the idiotic principle of the hidden “trashbin”, .Trash-$(uid), invented by Ubuntu. Even though it’s based on QT. This can’t be disabled. It accumulated 139 GB of literal Trash, fully replaceable, over time. Just … why? There’s even an open issue about this, for over a year, referenced multiple times. I guess I have another point on my agenda.
Your desktop environment should have settings for when to clear the trash. You can also use autotrash to clear it automatically.
The Problem is: I don’t have a DE, and therefore didn’t realize programs would still try to use trashbins.
Wait… How do you not have a DE but are using something like Prism Launcher? :/
With a plain WM, sway to be exact.
A window manager is only there to - well - manage the windows of programs. A DE provides a WM (eg. KDE has Kwin) as well as tools (eg. Discover, a detault file manager, settings programs) and a few other minor things. They also usually have less configurable WMs, usually stacking (with freeform windows that can hover above each other). As I don’t need any of that, just a way to move windows between screens and workspaces, a plain tiling WM is perfectly fine, and more flexible.
The only thing I need a file manager for is to get a quick overview over many images, and for that I use lf, in a terminal.