No, I’m not talking about corn-in-a-cup.
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Last night, I upgraded my laptop to Intrepid Ibex, just about a week before the newest version of Ubuntu, Jaunty Jackelope, comes out. Go figure. But before I could perform the upgrade, I was warned that my 7gig root partition on my small 40gig hard drive needed a few more free space. So I was wondering where that free space went; it couldn’t be because I installed the XFCE window manager (which I removed anyway). From Tombuntu, I learned that I could free up more space by removing old unused kernels.
How much free space? I freed 757megs by removing 6 old unused kernels!
Why do you get unused kernels anyway? It’s like a service pack or firmware upgrade, only instead of getting it thrice in…oh…a decade, you get them every few months or so. When a new Linux kernel is released, it contains several bug fixes, new drivers (so you won’t ever need your driver discs again), and improvements to OSes in all of Linux land, regardless of race, religion, or distribution. For safety, your old kernel is kept safe, just in case the new kernel won’t boot up. My Hardy Heron laptop had gathered 7 kernels (including the present) since April of LAST YEAR (In contrast, WinXP SP1 came out 2002, SP2 on 2004, and SP3 just 2008)!
Removing Old Kernels In Synaptic Package Manager
First up, check which kernel you have by running the following command in a terminal:
uname -r
You’ll get something like “2.6.27-11-generic” which is your current running kernel. Now go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.
Search for “linux-images” or click on the “Status” button and choose “Installed” to list only installed packages and scroll down for the linux-image-2.6.2X-XX-generic” packages. DO NOT mark your currently running kernel!
Click on their green boxes and select “Mark for Removal”.
After you’ve marked all old kernels for removal, click on apply.
References
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