Kernel upgrade is a downgrade

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I’m running Neon, Plasma 5.27.10

This morning I got the little gear update notice on the status bar. When I did the update, I had Kernel 6.5.0-17-generic installed.

A few hours later, I got another notice of updates. Looking at what this update is, I see it’s to install Kernel 5.15.0-94-generic.

This seems like quite a step back. I’ve never seen anything like this. Is this planned? Should I install it?

Thanks in advance…

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This is perfectly normal Ubuntu stuff. You aren’t having the 6.5 kernel replaced by this. It is a security update from Ubuntu to the existing 5.15 kernel you already have installed.

In *buntu installs, one can have multiple kernel ‘tracks’ installed.

For 22.04 LTS, the original kernel was 5.15.0. The HWE updates pull in newer kernel version on LTS releases, but do not replace the 5.15. Newer (non-server) Ubuntu ISO images don’t include the original 5.15 kernel track, but only the HWE kernels (currently 6.5). Older installs will have both the original 5.15, plus whatever the current HWE kernel versions are.

I think neon includes the original kernel as a fallback, since kernel updates have been known to sometimes break hardware support here and there, in Linux :smiley:

You can remove the meta-package linux-generic, linux-image-generic and any 5.15 kernel and header packages if desired.

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Ah yes… Makes sense now. I do have a couple of Kernels I can boot to in GRUB. I actually booted to an older Kernel last month because an update broke X.

Thanks for the reply :slight_smile: