Jettisoning Vanilla Kernel?

[Ralf Mardorf]

You can purge a kernel by apt or completely remove it with synaptic,
without any risk, that this will break anything of other installed
packages. But as Mike already hinted, you always should keep a kernel,
that does work and I'll add, you always should keep a backup of your
complete install.

You also should reconsider if upgrading packages, just for version
hunting is useful. Of course, security update are important and
sometimes you perhaps want new features, but if you want a stable
production environment, you should be aware, that upgrades could make
your Linux unstable.

If you completely will remove a kernel you can't do it by simply
removing the package. Assumed you needed special drivers, they will not
be removed, you have to delete them manually.

ls /lib/modules

will show you, if there are drivers kept for a kernel you removed.

On Quantal I've 3.5.0-18-lowlatency and 3.6.5-rt14 installed. Both
kernels do work, but I only use the self-build kernel-rt. I keep the
lowlatency kernel, just in case I should install something and my
self-build kernel should cause issues.