I have found my machine to be unstable with 3.2.0-58. Since starting to run 3.2.0-57 my machine has been much more stable, and I would like to remove 3.2.0.58 from my machine, partly so that I boot into 3.2.0-57 by default, and partly to keep things tidy. I followed the advice in this answer and searched for 3.2.0-58 in synaptic, selected the 4 modules that were found, right clicked and chose Mark for Removal and got this dialog
It looks like by removing 3.2.0-58 I'll remove linux itself! This isn't a good idea is it? I'm not running 3.2.0-58
$ uname -r
3.2.0-57-generic
How should I remove the latest kernel? Or is it too difficult / risky?
(Apologies if this is a duplicate, I did search but the posts I found were to do with removing old kernels.)
Best Answer
what are generic packages
Those generic packages are in fact meta-packages. This is a mechanism to allow newer kernel packages to be downloaded and automatically loaded.
Hence - you should in-fact keep these.
suggestions
The better way is to pin the kernel you wish to boot from. Once done, you can keep booting from the older kernel - but you will also be able to see when a newer kernel arrives. Thus you can then test out the newer kernel to see if your issue has resolved.
Another alternative is to test out one of the latest hardware enablement kernels - you can see if the latest kernel + latest graphics also resolves your issues. As a side effect you often see much faster graphics and better performance.
As always - anything that changes BOTH your kernel and graphics can lead to issues - so make sure you take an image backup first.
We already have great Q&A's on both how to pin your grub entry - as well as installing the hardware enablement stack. Thus, I wont repeat here those answer but instead guide you to click the links and view the already excellent answers there.
At the time of writing this, the latest hardware enablement stack is saucy
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