Tidying up the Ubuntu boot menu

Once you've installed a new kernel - they come periodically as part of your system updates - and you have rebooted into it and know it works fine, you can, if you wish, remove the old one to keep your GRUB boot
menu nice and tidy.

The way I do it is this:

- run Synaptic

- in the Quick Search box, enter the kernel main revision: for
instance, at the moment, for 10.04, that is 2.6.32 - do *NOT* include
the build number, the one on the end after a hyphen.

- now click the 1st column header, where it says "S". This sorts the
list by installation status. You want the entries with green squares
coming first - in other words, it's listing the installed packages
first, followed by ones that are not installed.

- go to the top of the list, if necessary, with the scrollbar. You
should now see 3 entries for each installed kernel version.

E.g. I have:

linux-headers-2.6.32-21
linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic
linux-headers-2.6.32-22
linux-headers-2.6.32-22-generic
linux-image-2.6.32-21-generic
linux-image-2.6.32-22-generic

Note that there are 3 entries for Linux 2.6.32-21 and 3 for Linux 2.6.32-22.

What you do next is to select the 3 entries for the older version - that is:
linux-headers-2.6.32-21
linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic
linux-image-2.6.32-21-generic

It's VERY IMPORTANT that you leave the entries for the current kernel - 2.6.32-22 in this case - UNselected.

Once you have selected the 3 parts of the older kernel version - hold down the Control key and click them to group-select - next, right-click them and pick "Mark for Complete Removal".

Then click Apply. Wait for Synaptic to remove the old kernel.

Reboot and you'll see only your latest kernel in the list.

Do this very carefully. Remove the wrong bits and you will leave your system unable to boot!

If you're not confident about doing this kind of thing, don't. Just ignore the older entries in GRUB.