KERNEL UPDATES

Being a derivative of the Long Term Support release of Ubuntu, Mint by default uses the same 5.4 series kernel featured there. Don’t be put off by the fact that the current branch of the kernel is numbered 5.13, since Canonical backports all manner of features and fixes to the Ubuntu kernel. Also the 5.4 kernel is itself a longterm branch (as you’ll see from kernel.org). It has always been possible, but not recommended, to use mainline kernels in Ubuntu, but a better way is to activate the hardware enablement HWE stack.

This will give you a newer kernel (which recently bumped from 5.8 to 5.11) which has undergone some Canonical patching and testing, as well as a refreshed graphics stack (new versions of X.org and libdrm and what have you). We mentioned the lowvisibility Edge edition of Mint (nothing to do with the web browser) in the DVD pages, but it’s definitely not worth reinstalling just to get a newer kernel. Likewise you probably shouldn’t install the HWE stack unless something is broken, but it’s a safer bet than being seduced by a stock kernel with a bigger number.

Desktop Ubuntu now gets the HWE kernels by default, and so it would seem does Pop!_OS, but not Mint. That’s okay, because it’s easy to install:

$ sudo apt install --install-recommends linuxgeneric-hwe-20.04

If you are using the Nvidia proprietary driver this is not enough, since you’ll need corresponding proprietary modules too. These you can get with:

$ sudo apt install --install-recommends linuxmodules-nvidia-NNN-generic-hwe-20.04 where NNN is the version of Nvidia drivers required by your card. You can find this out by running ubuntu-drivers list . Be aware that lots of users have encountered problems with the 5.8 HWE stack (sound, graphics, virtualisation) and the same is likely to be true for this one.