Should I upgrade to the most recent kernel or stick to the Ubuntu one?

Question

I use a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, 5.4 kernel.

I have some issues, like:

touch feature not working.
fingerprint login not working.
battery drops from 100% to 0% within less than 2 hours.
microphone not working.

So, I thought to upgrade the kernel from 5.4 to 5.8, which was released 2 days ago.

Can this step be risky? Should I stay on the current Ubuntu kernel (because they will take longer time to upgrade to 5.8)?

Kernel not tested by Ubuntu are not recommended. But in Ubuntu you can use the HWE kernels to support recent hardware. — xenoid, Aug 06 '20 at 10:40
Only upgrade when you know for sure it solves one of the four problems. Be prepared for a fifth new problem though. What you should really be doing is posting four different questions, one for each problem. — WinEunuuchs2Unix, Aug 06 '20 at 12:33
Does this answer your question? What is hardware enablement (HWE)? — karel, Aug 08 '20 at 19:29

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 08 '20 at 19:51

Can this step be risky?

Yes and no. New kernels are added and can be picked on boot so is fairly safe. But it IS a tricky update since we use specific kernels for Ubuntu.

Should I stay on the current Ubuntu kernel?

I would advice to stick with Ubuntu kernels. Kernels that are not released by the Ubuntu Kernel Team lack Ubuntu specific features so you would need to work around that too. Far too tricky.

Mind though that Ideapads work with Ubuntu. E41 is certified so it is likely newer version of these are supported too: the touchpad driver is generic, so is the microphone. Fingerprint login maybe no. The battery needs investigating: a kernel upgrade will likely not fix this.

Should I upgrade to the most recent kernel or stick to the Ubuntu one?

1 Answers1