As they are updated until end of life then just sit on your disk unused it would be very difficult for a inexperienced user to try to reuse them or do anything with them
One day you may need to go back. But if you feel that’s not the case get rid. But be prepared if it goes wrong to do another clean install and restart the process
In most cases you will besafe deleting excess kernels.
Always keep 2 that you know work .
There are sometimes issues where some apps require particular kernels… not often …but if you reject all new kernels then someday some apps may update and stop working because they dont match the kernel.
Apps and kernels are generally independent… but not completely.
The whole purpose of a distro is to make sure you have a set of apps and a kernel that will work together.
Yes, I always keep 2 kernels (I am not obsessed with cleaning or with disk space)
But if I add new hardware or new programs that need to talk to the hardware, I would jump to the latest kernel available from the distro (and it is extremely easy to do that in Mint). My point is, I would never install a version of the kernel that is not maintained (i.e. EOL) to solve a compatibility issue.
The kernels listed in Mint’s update manager are not taking up any space if not installed. They are listed as available if you wanted to install any of them. Plus they are easy to remove if you want to.
You mean memory space. They do use disk space.
Remember a kernel is not just the vmlinuz file … there is initrd and all the drivers in /lib/modules. Every kernel has its own drivers.
Hi Neville,
If you look back at post 13 (maybe 14) from @plino it shows a screen shot of the GUI from Mint of the kernels. None of the 6.17 kernels listed there show “Active” or “Installed” meaning it is only a reference list. Since none of the 6.17 kernels are installed, there no space taken in memory or on disk.
Have a good day.
Howard
Hi Howard,
Oh, I misunderstood you completely … sorry.
I am clearly not a mint user or it would have clicked.
Regards
Neville