Kernel 5.11

[Beerislife]

I'm running KDE Neon based on 20.04 with Kernel 5.4 on an AMD Ryzen 5 CPU based machine.

UKUU tells me that Kernel 5.11 is available. I hear rhat 5.10 or newer work better with AMD CPUs...

Is it safe or wise to upgrade to a newer kernel or should I just stay put?

[claydoh]

The kernels from ukuu are not official and have not been modified or tweaked to work specifically in Ubuntu so they often are missing drivers for some things.

However it is usually fine to install them and try them out. It is simple to choose a different kernel in the grub menu.


The "works better" part for AMD entirely depends on how new a system you have. And define "better". If things are working now you probably won't notice anything. Bios firmware updates are worth checking out as well for recent AMD systems.

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[Don B. Cilly]

What if someone wanted to do... the opposite?
Keep updating everything but the kernels?
Would
sudo apt-mark hold linux-image-generic linux-headers-generic
be enough? Or would one have to use wildcards and such?
And would it be "permanent" until an unhold command was issued? Or would one have to "hold" before each update?

[oshunluvr]

You can install 5.8 right now from the repos. You have to do it manually the first time because it's a new series up from 5.4.

5.8.0-43 is the most current as of this posting. You can do this in konsole:

sudo apt install `apt-cache search --names-only 5.8.0-43 | grep -v -e lowlatency -e nvidia -e unsigned | awk '{ print $1 }'`

This will install the generic, signed kernel and all it's add-ons except the nvidia modules:

[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#000000]linux-buildinfo-5.8.0-43-generic[/COLOR]
linux-cloud-tools-5.8.0-43-generic
linux-headers-5.8.0-43-generic
linux-hwe-5.8-cloud-tools-5.8.0-43
linux-hwe-5.8-headers-5.8.0-43
linux-hwe-5.8-tools-5.8.0-43
linux-image-5.8.0-43-generic
linux-modules-5.8.0-43-generic
linux-modules-extra-5.8.0-43-generic
linux-tools-5.8.0-43-generic

[/FONT]

[Beerislife]

I read somewhere that Kernel 5.11 is more optomised for AMD proceesors and you can get up to 6% more performance. When running apps like X-Plane 11, that extra 6% is a lot! :-)

[claydoh]

Try one and find out.
If your hardware has hardware released less than a year or so ago you might find some improvements.

I personally find such percentage figures to be....well, not spurious. Maybe not as noticeable as one might think?

Easy to check out for sure

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[oshunluvr]

What Clay says... Most benchmarks are just that - marks on the bench. A great example is the NVME/SSD/HD differences. Is my NVME drive 30x faster than my HD? Yes, absolutely. Is my system 30x faster? Nope, not even close. I;m not saying there are times when the nvme drive pays off, it's just not a blanket thing.

I think you my be getting what feels like push-back from us because we've been down this path and there are almost always potholes. Going off the reservation for something as critical as a kernel can be less than a smooth journey. However, as always it's your system so have at it if you wish. And report your results. I know at least one other user on here uses UKUU kernels...