Should I switch from the older OEM kernel to the newer generic kernel?

xavier666@lemm.ee to Linux@lemmy.ml – 22 points –

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

  1. 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
  2. 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

  1. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1395080/which-kernel-should-i-use-for-my-hardware-oem-or-generic
  2. https://www.reddit.com/r/XPS/comments/rif7wo/ubuntu_after_installation_oem_kernel_instead_of/
  3. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1387979/removing-a-oem-installed-kernel
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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?