I am using grub 1.97beta. I have Ubuntu 9.10 installed. The grub menu list is full of Ubuntu 9.10 with two listings for each Linux kernel version. I really have no need to go back to older kernel versions. Can those be eliminated? How? I didn't find anything in the grub wiki but that doesn't mean I didn't miss it some how.

TIA

There's a lot of ways to do it from manaully editing your configs and removing the files to purging them from apt. I recommend the later though.

You can see which is your current version by typing:
You can see the kernels you have installed by typing:
You can remove them individually by typing:
I suggest leaving the two most recent kernels (the one you're running and previous one.)

Simply edit the config file and remove the entries you don't need.

The config file is typically "/boot/grub/menu.lst"

You should be able to use Synaptic Package Manager to remove any unwanted kernels. That will also remove them from grub. It's also the safest way. Like rweaver, I suggest you always keep 2 kernels active.

Given that you are using a "distro," and therefore maintaining your kernel images et al using that mechanism, usually the best way to handle things is to manually remove the "older kernel version" packages that you no longer require. This will not only remove them from the Grub menu, but also inform the package-system that these kernels are no longer needed.

You see, it's quite routine for kernels to be flagged as ... "the fact that I have just installed version x+1 of this package does not mean that version x can safely be replaced." (For what are fairly-obvious reasons.) Kernels stay around until you explicitly remove them. Since you're relying upon a distro and its package-system, you should stick with that... just tell it what you want to do.