Comment 91 for bug 798414

Completely agree with @grey - it is unacceptable that such a simple thing will consistently create problems for ALL ubuntu users, many of which will not be comfortable with entering "sudo apt-get -y autoremove" or whatever in terminal.

I do understand the issue though - each kernel is a separate package, and as such, apt can't just uninstall it without asking.

So I suggest that as default, instead of linux-image-generic depending on the latest kernel package, create a new pakcage, perhaps called "linux-image-generic-current", which does not /depend/ on the latest kernel package, but /is/ the latest kernel package (or a copy at least). This way. when a new kernel is released, this package will get a new version and the kernel will be downloaded and *replace* the old one. There may be a catch here, but I am sure if there is someone knowledgeable will tell me :)
It's important that this is the default, as less knowledgeable users will then avoid the issue without having to do anything.

Yes, I know that this way, you can't boot on an older kernel. This is rarely an issue though, as most people don't do that. For the few cases it is needed, maybe one could add another package "linux-image-generic-previous" for the second to the last version and/or "linux-image-generic-original" for the first kernel to be released for the current version of Ubuntu?
Of course it's completely possible for a user to install one specific kernel separately, which they can use in case the latest one can't boot.

For people who genuinely needs the current way of always retaining the previous kernels, linux-image-generic could continue to be maintained as well as linux-image-generic-current, and either of the two can be installed, but not both. I believe this is possible with apt?

I also suggest the default boot partition size to be 5% of total disk space, min 250MB (current default), max 2GB.
But no matter how big you make it, eventually it will run out of space anyway, so only increasing the size of the /boot partition is just delaying the issue.

Alternatively, can a cron or startup job be set up as default (on all new installations of Ubuntu), that runs "apt-get -y autoremove", perhaps only for linux-kernel packages (if possible) at boot or every month or so?