How to deal with the generic kernel?

[Alf Haakon Lund]

I'm running Ubuntu Studio 12.10, 32-bit, on a Toshiba Sattelite p850.

Recently jack stopped working. As this happened right after an update, I 
was able to guess that the latest kernel caused the issue. At next boot 
I chose advanced features in the GRUB menu and so I noticed that 
3.5.0-33-generic was my default kernel. I chose 3.5.0-31-lowlatency 
instead and JACK went back to work.

I asked a question about this on the LAU mailing list and got an answer 
that made it clear Ubuntu Studio doesn't use the generic kernel by 
default. This prompted me to check out 13.04 through VirtualBox.

Right: After the fresh install Synaptic says no generic kernels are 
installed, but on it's first run Software Updater includes them anyway 
in the security update section.

So I have three main questions:

- What could I have done to suddenly start using the generic instead of 
the lowlatency kernel?

- Why is Software Updater including them anyway?

- What can I do to get permanently rid of this nuisance? I want to run 
the lowlatency kernels and be done with it.

Amongst the bunch of other questions that arose I'd like to mention just 
a few:

I uninstalled the generic kernel, but after rebooting and chosing GRUB's 
default the info in system monitor still says 3.5.0-33-generic. I am 
pretty sure I uninstalled while in 3.5.0-31-lowlatency so I should've 
avoided the dilemma command "system: uninstall yourself!" How do I make 
sure which kernel I'm actually running? And doesn't GRUB notice when 
kernels are removed?

OK, I'm thankful for any and all input and will happily file bug reports 
in the proper places once someone properly helps point me to them ;-)

Al F