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I've been running HWE kernel series for some time, mainly because they often give better performance, but also because (in my experience) they seem more reliable (being, as I understand it, backported from newer versions of Ubuntu).

Currently, I'm running Kubuntu 20.04.3, with kernel 5.13.0-27-generic, and I've installed Livepatch to avoid having to reboot once a week as kernel patches are applied (I'm now told that's not what it does, but rather applies patches I don't recall even noticing without a restart requirement).

Either way, however, Livepatch works only on the running kernel version, and with HWE installed, I have two separate kernels that both get minor version upgrades every week or two -- and rarely on the same day. That means I have to restart a lot more often than seems strictly necessary -- but if I try to ignore the restart nags I'll inevitably wind up doing it accidentally from some unrelated upgrade.

I just attempted to uninstall linux-image-5.4.0-100-generic, which was due for such an upgrade (requiring a restart for a kernel I've never booted, because I'm running the 5.13 series and have been for at least several months) -- and didn't notice until Synaptic was running the changes that all I'd done was install the upgrade the upgrade notifier was telling me about (and now I'm being nagged to restart again).

Is there a way to remove the non-HWE kernel family once I'm stably running HWE, so at least I only have roughly half as many kernel-upgrade restarts? Obviously without mangling my daily driver, of course...

Zeiss Ikon
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  • Try this command: sudo apt remove --purge linux-image-generic linux-headers-generic These two are the respective meta packages for the non-HWE kernel and headers. If you remove them the current non-HWE kernel and headers will be removed and new kernels (and headers) won't be installed when they become available in the repository. Let me know if this works. I don't use Livepatch. If it works, I will write a full answer for you to accept. – user68186 Mar 09 '22 at 00:12
  • Simply running sudo apt remove --purge linux-generic may also work. See this answer how this meta package is related to linux-image-generic and linux-headers-generic. – user68186 Mar 09 '22 at 00:28
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    Possible duplicate of https://askubuntu.com/a/885582/243321 although that is from another release – Organic Marble Mar 09 '22 at 02:12
  • As I mostly expected, removing these meta-packages didn't remove the actual kernel packages they depend on. Installing them would pull in the current image and header files and those files' depends, but removing them does almost nothing. This should, however, allow me to individually remove the appropriate 5.4.x kernel packages without getting automatic replacement. – Zeiss Ikon Mar 10 '22 at 22:14
  • @user68186 Yes, I was able to remove linux-*-5.4.0-104-generic successfully without replacement. Now restart to get rid of the leftover nag and I should be good. – Zeiss Ikon Mar 10 '22 at 22:24
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    I am voting to close this question as a duplicate, rather than converting my earlier comments to an answer. @OrganicMarble your answer covers it. – user68186 Mar 11 '22 at 16:18

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