I am using a Dell Latitude 3420 (Ubuntu 22.04.3) and it uses a slightly older OEM kernel 5.14.0-1048-oem.
The generic kernels keep getting upgraded but are never used. The current generic that I have is 6.2.0-26-generic and 5.15.0-79-generic.
So I have 2 questions
- Should I leave the kernel as it is? Some threads online say it's better to leave it as it is as an OEM kernel is better for Ubuntu-certified laptops
- If I should change the kernel, what would be the best way? I don't want to hard-code the kernel version.
- If I have issues in the latest generic kernel, I should be able to roll-back to the OEM kernel.
Related links
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1395080/which-kernel-should-i-use-for-my-hardware-oem-or-generic
- https://www.reddit.com/r/XPS/comments/rif7wo/ubuntu_after_installation_oem_kernel_instead_of/
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1387979/removing-a-oem-installed-kernel
Are there specific bugs vulnerabilities in your current kernel that you want to avoid? There usually isn't much to gain by upgrading kernels, unless you have unsupported hardware or a kernel vulnerability. And if your lucky, the OEM kernel should have bug fixes backported to it anyway.
If you have the generic kernels installed, you should be able to boot them from GRUB/bootloader, try it and see if it all still works?
Is the OEM kernel getting security updates? Then it should be fine.
If you want a specific feature that's available in the newer kernel, then just try it out. You can select the kernel during boot. If it all works, uninstall the OEM kernel and it should default to the generic one.
Edit: If you want to find out whether you're getting security updates, I'd check the changelog. It should be somewhere like
/usr/share/doc/linux-image-somethingsomething/changelog.gz. The entries there should have a date. If the last security fix is older than a couple of weeks, that would be concerning.https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/OEMKernel
Unless you know that you need/want features/fixes not (yet) part of the OEM kernel you should stay with that.
You can go with generic, build your own, or even go for the mainline kernel. But you might find some hardware not supported.
I was going through the wiki and found this line
The OEM kernel is also called the OEM staging kernel, because the delta in OEM kernel should all be merged to the generic kernel in the next Ubuntu release, so it is essentially a staging code base.
Since the latest kernel SHOULD have all the hardware-specific commits of the OEM, right?
My details on how canonical handle their kernels are very limited. I’m no Ubuntu fan, I just manage Ubuntu servers.
You can check the delta here: https://staging.kernel.ubuntu.com/oem-delta/
