Purging old kernels automatically? (was: Re: Next Xubuntu community meeting)

[Jimmy Sjölund]

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 1:26 AM, Pasi Lallinaho <pasi at shimmerproject.org>wrote:

>  As Jackson said, 'sudo apt-get autoremove' would take care of cleaning
> old kernels. I don't use GUI package managers, but I suspect they have
> similar functionality.
>
> Automated methods, even those who'd notify the user and confirmed if they
> wanted to remove old kernels, are problematic. What if the user didn't know
> what a kernel is? Can we check that the user hasn't actually used these
> kernels in the last n days?
>
> I'm not saying I'm against a automated, user-controlled method, but it's
> probably best to discuss that on a larger scale for all flavors. Something
> might even be in the works.
>
> Cheers,
> Pasi
>
> It's a tricky question. Myself I always feel that automated removal stuff
might be "dangerous". On the other hand I know that if my family and
friends would finally change over to *buntu they would not be bothered with
running "sudo apt-get autoremove" or even within a GUI. In my experience
most ordinary users don't want to even think about security updates, if I
would mention removing kernels they would boot up their Windows or Mac OS
boot disc faster than a beer on a Friday evening. They just want the system
to take care of itself. Which of course is a bit hard to accommodate.

A check for use in the last n days might turn up some issues for Ubuntu
Studio if you have both the lowlatency and generic kernel as one of them
might be unused for some time but still good to have in the system.

/Jimmy
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