I’m sure I’m not the only one who likes to keep their Linux OS clean from old, unused packages, especially Linux kernels, whose number (and size) keeps growing with each update or upgrade. This is particularly true if your distro handles kernels differently, protecting them from the handy autoremove command and keeping many installed kernels. This is the case with my current daily driver, Fedora 41 (KDE spin, for those curious), which by default keeps three installed kernels.
Motivated by necessity and after some exploration, I found a way to automate the process of safely removing old, unused kernels. In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll walk through that process. Let the cleaning begin!