How to Install Linux Kernel 5.5 in Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Posted by warren January 28, 2020

upgrade Linux Kernel

Linux Kernel 5.5 was announced two days ago. Linus Torvalds wrote on lkml.org:

“So this last week was pretty quiet, and while we had a late network update with some (mainly iwl wireless) network driver and netfilter module loading fixes, David didn’t think that warranted another -rc. And outside of that, it’s really been very quiet indeed – there’s a panfrost driver update too, but again it didn’t really seem to make sense to delay the final release by another week.

…”

Kernel 5.5 release highlights:

  • Support for the Broadcom BCM2711 SoC (Raspberry Pi 4).
  • New Logitech driver for G15 and G510 keyboard.
  • KVM support for IBM POWER secure guests/VMs.
  • Initial Intel Jasper Lake support.
  • Intel 5-level paging support is enabled by default
  • AMD OverDrive overclocking for Navi GPUs.
  • and much more other changes.

How to Install Linux Kernel 5.5 in Ubuntu:

The mainline kernels do not include any Ubuntu-provided drivers or patches. They are not supported and are not appropriate for production use

The mainline kernel packages for Linux 5.5 are available for download at the link below:

Download Kernel 5.5

Depends on your OS type, download and install the packages in turns:

  1. linux-headers-5.5.0-xxxxxx_all.deb
  2. linux-headers-5.5.0-xxx-generic(/lowlatency)_xxx_amd64.deb
  3. linux-modules-5.5.0-xxx-generic(/lowlatency)_xxx_amd64.deb
  4. linux-image-xxx-5.5.0-xxx-generic(/lowlatency)_xxx_amd64.deb

Select generic for common system, and lowlatency for a low latency system (e.g. for recording audio), amd64 for 64bit system, or armhf, arm64, etc for other OS types.

Alternatively you can download and install the kernel binaries via terminal commands ( open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T):

For 64-bit OS:

cd /tmp/

wget -c https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v5.5/linux-headers-5.5.0-050500_5.5.0-050500.202001262030_all.deb

wget -c https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v5.5/linux-headers-5.5.0-050500-generic_5.5.0-050500.202001262030_amd64.deb

wget -c https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v5.5/linux-image-unsigned-5.5.0-050500-generic_5.5.0-050500.202001262030_amd64.deb

wget -c https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v5.5/linux-modules-5.5.0-050500-lowlatency_5.5.0-050500.202001262030_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Note that there’s no Kernel 5.5 packages for 32-bit system.

Once installed, restart your computer and enjoy!

Uninstall Linux Kernel 5.5:

Restart your machine and select boot with the previous kernel in boot menu ‘Grub2 -> Advanced Option for Ubuntu’. Then run command to remove Linux Kernel 5.5:

sudo dpkg --purge linux-image-unsigned-5.5.0-050500-generic
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