Too many kernels in grub menu

[Stuart Lowes]

The grub menu items are particulary confusing to the average joe user (Which
option do i pick?), especially when there are multiple kernels installed and
dual booting. So with a dual boot system you end up with menu like:

---
Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.14-4-386
Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.14-4-386 (recovery mode)
Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.14-2-386
Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.14-2-386 (recovery mode)
Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-4-386
Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-4-386 (recovery mode)

Other operating systems

Windows XP
---

Even though the user understands that they can boot different OSes they often do
not know which Ubuntu option to select. This really needs to change as its the
first thing a user sees and if they can't work out how to boot the system then
the first impression cannot be positive.

An improvement would be

---
Ubuntu
Windows XP
More options (this would goto another menu with the other kernels and memory
test options
---

[Uwe (gandalf.the.grey)]

As well as new menu items are added when an additional kernel is installed removing a kernel should also remove the corresponding options from the grub menu.

[Alexander Kirillov (shurik179)]

And while we are at it, is it also possible to prettify (add colors/backgrounds) the menu a bit? Look at boot menu for SUSE 10.1...

[Uwe (gandalf.the.grey)]

Yes, yes, yes!!!

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

Uwe: it does if you remove the kernel package
Alexander: that breaks too many machines

[Alexander Kirillov (shurik179)]

>that breaks too many machines

I was afraid of that (sigh..). But how does SuSE do this? Maybe we can return to this for Edgy?

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Okay, the general prettifying of grub is bug #19251.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Oops, I meant bug #3339.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

The /boot/grub/menu.lst has a "# howmany" option to specify the number of kernels shown in the grub menu, and the default value is "all". Maybe you would like to set "# howmany 1" for instance.

[Laurent Séguin (cybersdf)]

The question was asked to me recently : what line do i chose ? How remove others ?

We put, in the application menu the magic "add/remove" but in grub we have many kernel to choose.
I suggest to, by default, keep only the current kernel and the -1 version (for safety).
Maybe with a meta package ? And for users who want keep oldest kernel, they don't install it.

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

Since the original report was made 3 years ago, it seems like developers this is fine the way it is. I think this is useful to have some kernels to choose from and it's not complicated at all.
If you still think this is a good idea than go to http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ and if many people agrees with you it calls the developers attention to it.