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Once again, Linux Lite users are among the first to be able to install the most recent Linux kernel series, in this case Linux kernel 5.8, on their personal computers.
Announced by Linus Torvalds over the past weekend, the Linux 5.8 kernel series brings some interesting features, such as Branch Target Identification (BTI) and Shadow Call Stack for the AArch64 (ARM64) architecture, LZO-RLE compression support for the F2FS file system, inline encryption support for the block layer, Kernel Concurrency Sanitizer (KCSAN), and much more.
All these new features and improvements usually translate to better hardware support, so if you want to install Linux kernel 5.8 on your Linux Lite computer, now you can, especially if you want see if your hardware works better or if you had some devices that weren’t supported by your current kernel. The kernel is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit installations of the Linux Lite series 3.x, 4.x, and 5.x, so here’s how to install it!
Installing Linux kernel 5.8 on Linux Lite
Installing Linux kernel 5.8 on your Linux Lite computer is quite easy, but you should keep in mind that if you use proprietary drivers, such as the Nvidia graphics driver, or you don’t actually need a newer kernel, you better refrain yourself from installing it. In other words, you should possess the knowledge to troubleshoot your installation in case anything goes wrong.
As always, there are two options to install a new kernel version in Linux Lite. A graphical one by opening the Lite Tweaks app from the System menu and selecting the “Kernel Installer” feature, and a command-line one, by running the commands below in a terminal emulator.
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install linux-headers-linuxlite-5.8.0 linux-image-linuxlite-5.8.0 -y
This will install Linux kernel 5.8 on your Linux Lite computer, but, of course, you will also have to reboot your computer once the installation completes for the new kernel version to be correctly installed. Happy hacking!
Last updated 4 years ago
