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I have installed and uninstalled a couple of kernels(including some low latency ones) to test them out.

Now I have:

$ uname -r
4.8.0-39-generic

But now I get the following message whenever I try to install other packages:

The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required: thermald Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.

I have tried to check the date when this thermald was installed using this answer here

And the date it shows me is: thermald 2016-07-19 15:48:01.000000000 -0500

I have installed Ubuntu in Nov 2016. So this is not the date when thermald is installed. So is it safe to remove it using autoremove?

$ lsb_release -a 
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
Release:    16.04
Codename:   xenial

I have used this tool to remove all the inactive kernels. ( Also tried 4.9.12 and 4.10 using this same tool)

I got the 4.8 kernel by doing this:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ apt-cache search linux-image
$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-4.8.0-39-generic linux-image-4.8.0-39-generic linux-image-extra-4.8.0-39-generic
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2 Answers2

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thermald is not a vital package, but recommended by the linux-image-generic kernel meta-package.

You can get this information by running 

apt show thermald

(shows general info about the package, note the output line "Priority: optional"), and 

apt rdepends thermald

(shows a list of packages that directly depend on/recommend/suggest thermald).

Recommended packages are no necessary dependencies, but normally automatically installed like those, because although the recommending package can work without them, they add important functionality.

So you could remove thermald if you desire to do so, but I would recommend you to fix the dependency chain and properly install the meta-package which recommends thermald again.

Probably this can be done in your case by running

sudo apt install --reinstall linux-generic

This should not install any real packages, providing you still have them all, just meta-packages like linux-image-generic or so. After that, thermald should no longer be in the autoremove candidate list.

Edit:

As you say you are on 16.04 LTS and want the 4.8 HWE kernel instead of the 4.4. GA kernel, make sure you have the meta-package linux-generic-hwe-16.04 (and xserver-xorg-hwe-16.04) installed instead of the linux-generic I recommended above.

Byte Commander
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  • Thanks that worked. But it has installed the following packages: linux-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-64 linux-headers-4.4.0-64-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-4.4.0-64-generic linux-image-extra-4.4.0-64-generic linux-image-generic. In 16.04.2, the main LTS kernel is 4.8 right? So why is it installing 4.4 to me? I actually had to manually install 4.8. –  Feb 26 '17 at 23:21
  • No, the standard kernel of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial) is 4.4. You only get 4.8 in Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety) or by installing it manually. If you were running 16.04, it is correct behaviour that it installs the latest 4.4 kernel. It would have been helpful if your question contained information about the Ubuntu release you use and about what kernel package you installed and from where. – Byte Commander Feb 26 '17 at 23:28
  • According to this page here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Support , the 16.04.2 has 4.8. I got 4.8 by running apt-cache search linux-image and sudo apt-get install linux-headers-4.8.0-39-generic linux-image-4.8.0-39-generic linux-image-extra-4.8.0-39-generic. The output of lsb_release -a gives me Description: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS The meta packages were probably removed because I have used this tool to remove it: https://github.com/mtompkins/linux-kernel-utilities –  Feb 26 '17 at 23:34
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    Yes, 16.04's GA (general availability) kernel is 4.4, but its current HWE (hardware enablement) kernel comes from 16.10 and is version 4.8. If you originally installed an Ubuntu version below 16.04.2, it will default to the GA kernel. If you want the HWE kernels and Xorg stack instead, install sudo apt install linux-image-generic-hwe-16.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-16.04 and remove sudo apt purge linux-generic. After that, sudo apt autoremove should clean up the rest. For more info see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack and http://askubuntu.com/questions/248914/ – Byte Commander Feb 27 '17 at 00:14
  • By doing that can I get Xorg 1.19? Because I read the fix for screen tearing is in xorg 1.19. –  Feb 27 '17 at 00:35
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    No, xserver-xorg-core-hwe-16.04 is just an updated version of 1.18 as well. But I am not sure how well an HWE kernel and the GA Xorg stack work together... Should be okay, but the Ubuntu Wiki recommends upgrading both at once. – Byte Commander Feb 27 '17 at 00:42
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thermald produced A LOT of problems for me on notebook. Ubuntu had random and extremely annoying lags until I removed it.

I removed thermald and everything is working just great.

Andrew Zhilin
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