Make automatic remove of obsolete kernels the default instead of opt-in

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#696 2 comments 5 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
linux, python
Domain
operating-systems

Research direction

The issue names no files or tests. Start by locating the automatic maintenance preference and the existing obsolete-kernel cleanup behavior in the Update Manager, then determine how the default and retention count are configured. Done means automatic cleanup is enabled by default, retains three old kernels, and remains user-configurable.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

I have a suggestion on kernel that are not deleted.

After a Mint update from Mint 17 to 20, I've found that I have many old kernel on my system. I've never deleted them and didn't know that I have to delete them manually. It can consume quite a bit of disk space (gigabytes), if there are many. I'm aware that a fresh install of Mint is advised rather then upgrading and I would probably not have that many on my system with a fresh install. Still, I assume one can accumulate quite a number of kernel over the lifetime of a Mint LTS version in 5 years and in the case there is an update, even more (17 in my case).

I would suggest that old kernels get deleted regularly by the system and by default, with the following option
Edit > Preferences > Automation tab > automatic maintenance
I think that the majority of Mint users will profit if this options is turned on by default. I would say it would be good to keep 3 old kernels. It's saver then only one but it's till not too much disk space that is wasted.

I assume that there may be a few people who would rater like to delete kernels manually and for those it should be possible to turn off that auto feature.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
425
Forks
190
No merged PRs in 30d

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