mandriva creating partitions
 

I ran a mandriva live cd and decided that it blew my old os away

however when i shut the computer off and started it up the next morning i

realized that every time it downloaded updates it seemed to create a new

boot up choice which started filling up my hard drive pretty fast i was

wondering if i could possibly get that to stop as i don't have a huge hard drive

i am running mandriva gnome 2009

I'd like to see the contents of /boot/grub/menu.lst to decide whether or not your system really is creating new bootup choices, which would be a surprising behaviour.

Correction not every update , only if the update includes a new kernel
But it is possible to delete the kernel not in use and also remove it from the menu.lst
I do not now how big you're hd is ?
But there is also a maximum of old kernels kept by Mandriva ,it does not go for ever and ever .
Before deleting the kernel and the option from the menu.lst be sure the new kernel works for you.

oh yeah btw my hard drive is only a 40 gig

You stated that you blew away the old Os .
If you give the entire HD to Mandriva that is more than enough
Of course with the exception that you install a lot software.
But you can check how much space is left.

i meant in terms of usability and user friendliness
and mandriva seems to run a lot smoother on less ram than windows does

Generally speaking you need about 512 MB Of RAM to let Mandriva run smoothly , but as you know it also depends on the GUI you use.
Just as a example XFCE is lot smaller GUI than KDE
So XFCE will run faster than KDE
What I remember from the old when I use 3 GB RAM windows xp was still slow if I compare it with my linux distros