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It happens to have some issue and found a suggestion of type "upgrade the kernel solve the problem"

So, I can just wait and do regular upgrades and kernel will upgrade to latest version or I do have do upgrade manually the kernel?

(by the way, I'm referring explicitly to accepted answer to this question)

If I open my package-manager I see plenty of "linux-image" packages and I'm not sure what to do exactly.

user126154
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  • Are you saying that you are currently running an oem kernel? Changing away from that may be unwise until all your hardware is in the mainline kernel ("oem" suggests that all your hardware is NOT in the mainline kernel yet). – user535733 May 06 '21 at 17:03

3 Answers3

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20.04 is one year old. The software in that release is one year old. The kernel is one year old, with some backported patches.

For newer software (and newer kernels), try a newer release of Ubuntu. You can easily do that without reinstalling: Create a LiveUSB of the Ubuntu 20.10 or 21.04 .iso and test the "Try Ubuntu" environment.

If your problem is fixed in one of those newer releases of Ubuntu, then you can decide if you want to migrate to one of those releases or not, or if you want to use that newer kernel in 20.04 using hwe.

  • HWE uses the same kernel as newer releases, but is released three months later.
  • Example: Kernel 5.8 is in Ubuntu 20.10 and Ubuntu 20.04.2 (January 2021)
  • Example: Kernel 5.11 is in Ubuntu 21.04 and will be in Ubuntu 20.04.3 (July 2021)
user535733
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To update / upgrade the system to latest versions available in the repositories (and PPAs) run

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade

The first command updates the local package database The second downloads and installs packages for kernels and tools and applications installed from the repo's.

Soren A
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  • I did this, it seems all updatede. But when I do "uname -a" I get "Linux 5.6.0-1055-oem", but in the package manager I see a lot of "linux-image-generic" with versions at least 5.8. So it seems that the usual upgrade does not upgrade the kernel to latest version – user126154 May 06 '21 at 11:58
  • If a new kernel was installed , you need to reboot to activate it. Without rebooting your system keeps running on the old kernel version. In /var/log/apt/history.log you can see what was installed/updated/deleted today, and in the .gz files what was done earlier. – Soren A May 06 '21 at 12:28
  • Did. Same result. By the way what is the difference between a kernel 5.6.0-1055-oem and a 5.8.30 generic? – user126154 May 06 '21 at 16:53
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Yes, Automatic Kernel update is possible. You can configure automatic security update. When you configure automatic security updates, no further manual upgrade is required. Ubuntu will check and apply all security updates including kernel packages on scheduled timeline.

KK Patel
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