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I have Ubuntu installed on a small partition (20 GB), so my disk space is at quite a premium. I constantly have to clear out old linux-header-* and linux-image-* packages, because they consume relatively large amounts of storage for each version (~270 MB), which really adds up when there's like 20 of them installed.

There are times when apt-get autoremove gets rid of a few of them, but it still leaves a substantial amount behind.

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    I guess we all "suffer" from this, but probably there's a good reason for not making this automatic ; -) Therefore, we probably need an optional "cronjob" that will remove old kernels merely by pressing OK on a confirmation dialog box -- perhaps a little more practical solution than Ubuntu Tweak's Janitor.
    – Sadi
    Nov 15, 2015 at 9:21
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    Related: This post asked "How does 'apt' decides how many old kernels to keep". The answer pointed to the apt-auto-removal script with criteria on deciding which packages to keep. Hence, this could be a possible duplicate.
    – user37165
    Nov 15, 2015 at 9:58

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Ubuntu keeps older kernels installed to let you boot Ubuntu with an older kernel in case the new kernel generates problems when starting the system. When you want to get rid of older kernels, you can remove them manually.

Here you find some more information and instructions on how to do this -> Remove Old Kernels

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