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How to Remove old and un-used Kernel from System and Grub Menu - Ubuntu Linux

The kernel is a piece of software that, roughly speaking, provides a layer between the hardware and the application programs running on a computer. In a strict, computer-science sense, the term 'Linux' refers only to the kernel - the software that Linus Torvalds wrote in the early 90s.

All the other pieces you find in a Linux distribution - the Bash shell, the KDE window manager, web browsers, the X server, Tux Racer and everything else - are just applications that happen to run on Linux and are emphatically not part of the operating system itself.

Every time when Ubuntu finds new updates of this kernel it installs a new Linux kernel, the old one is left behind. This means that if you are regularly updating an Ubuntu system the Grub boot menu becomes longer and longer with kernels you don’t need anymore.

The old kernels are deliberately left installed and on the menu so you can boot a previous kernel if you have trouble with a new one. But if the new one works, you can safely uninstall the old kernel, which will also result in the Grub menu being cleaned up.

Before removing the old kernels you need to find out which version of kernel your system is running using command:
uname -r
This will give you the kernel version that you are running and make sure that you don;t remove this kernel.

Now, open up the System > Administrator > Synaptic package manager and search for "linux-image-2" and select all the un-used kernel versions and click of "Remove Completely".





1 comments:

Anonymous said...

In addition, one should search for "linux-headers" and remove the header files associated with the removed kernel to recover the disk space.

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