4

I've confirmed that I got the point release update to 20.04.3 LTS with lsb_release -a, but uname -r shows that my kernel is still on 5.4.0-81-generic. Should I not be on 5.11? My machine running Ubuntu 21.04 is on 5.11.0-31-generic.

I found an old thread here which proposes using apt to install linux-generic, but I wanted to make sure it was still good advice.

KneadToKnow
  • 364
  • See also: Why don't the Ubuntu repositories have the latest versions of software? – Nmath Aug 27 '21 at 19:54
  • Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server defaults to the GA kernel; as do flavors of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (eg. Lubuntu) with installs using the 20.04 & 20.04.1 media. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Desktop & flavors using 20.04.2 or higher media however default to using the HWE kernel; so it's the ISO used to install your Ubuntu 20.04 LTS system which dictates which kernel set is default. It can be changed, and you can have both GA & HWE installed (selecting which you use at boot time, ie. grub) – guiverc Aug 27 '21 at 22:34

2 Answers2

5

Presumably you are running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on this machine because you have determined that it's more important for this machine to be stable rather than having newer, more bleeding edge software.

Ubuntu 20.04 currently uses Linux Kernel 5.4 unless you have enabled HWE or have manually upgraded the kernel beyond the version in repositories.

Unless you actually need the newer kernel version, it might be better to leave it alone if stability is more important to you than the newest versions of software.

Nmath
  • 12,333
4

You have to enable HWE stack for kernel by

sudo apt install --install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-20.04

See release cycle for actual kernel versions.

N0rbert
  • 99,918
  • Isn't this installed by default automatically? I have Ubuntu 20.04 and have the HWE kernel, but don't remember specifically installing the above package. – raj Aug 27 '21 at 21:57
  • @raj I may be completely wrong... it might be that if you install 20.04.1 or above it defaults to having hwe enabled, while if you install 20.04 (i.e. first release) it doesn't. I have some memory of something like this, but I'm very fuzzy on the details... – Bakuriu Feb 12 '22 at 14:26