How to Install Linux Kernel 4.18 in Ubuntu, Linux Mint

Last updated: August 13, 2018

Linux Kernel

Linus Torvalds finally announced the release of Linux Kernel 4.18 yesterday afternoon. He wrote in lkml.org:

It was a very calm week, and arguably I could just have released on schedule last week, but we did have some minor updates. Mostly networking, but some vfs race fixes (mentioned in the rc8 announment
as “pending”) and a couple of driver fixes (scsi, networking, i2c). Some other minor random things (arm crypto fix, parisc memory ordering fix). Shortlog appended for the (few) details.

Some of these I was almost ready to just delay to until the next merge window, but they were marked for stable anyway, so it would just have caused more backporting. The vfs fixes are for old races that are
really hard to hit (which is obviously why they are old and weren’t noticed earlier). Some of them _have_ been seen in real life, some of them probably need explicit help to ever trigger (ie artificial delays
just to show that “yes, this can actually happen in theory”).

Changes in kernel 4.18 include:

  • Initial support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC.
  • Various power management improvements to AMDGPU
  • Initial NVIDIA GV100 Volta support within Nouveau DRM driver
  • 32-bit ARM finally gets mitigated for Spectre V1/V2
  • Various new sound chips support
  • USB 3.2 and USB Type-C improvements.
  • And many other changes.

How to Install Linux Kernel 4.18 in Ubuntu:

There a few tools, e.g., UKTools and Ukuu, make it easy to install the latest Kernel in Ubuntu.

You can also manually download the Kernel 4.18 Ubuntu binary packages at:

Download Kernel 4.18

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

  1. linux-headers-4.18.0-xxxxxx_all.deb
  2. linux-headers-4.18.0-xxx-generic(/lowlatency)_xxx_amd64(/i386).deb
  3. linux-modules-4.18.0-xxx-generic(/lowlatency)_xxx_amd64(/i386).deb
  4. linux-image-xxx-4.18.0-xxx-generic(/lowlatency)_xxx_amd64(/i386).deb

Select generic for common system, and lowlatency for a low latency system (e.g. for recording audio), amd64 for 64bit system, i386 for 32bit system, or armhf, arm64, etc for other OS types.

Also you can download and install the kernel binaries via terminal commands:

For 64-bit OS:

cd /tmp/

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.18/linux-headers-4.18.0-041800_4.18.0-041800.201808122131_all.deb

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.18/linux-headers-4.18.0-041800-generic_4.18.0-041800.201808122131_amd64.deb

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.18/linux-image-unsigned-4.18.0-041800-generic_4.18.0-041800.201808122131_amd64.deb

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.18/linux-modules-4.18.0-041800-generic_4.18.0-041800.201808122131_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

for 32-bit OS:

cd /tmp/

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.18/linux-headers-4.18.0-041800_4.18.0-041800.201808122131_all.deb

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.18/linux-headers-4.18.0-041800-generic_4.18.0-041800.201808122131_i386.deb

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.18/linux-image-4.18.0-041800-generic_4.18.0-041800.201808122131_i386.deb

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.18/linux-modules-4.18.0-041800-generic_4.18.0-041800.201808122131_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Once installed, restart your computer and enjoy!

Uninstall Linux Kernel 4.17:

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 4.18.0:

sudo dpkg --purge linux-image-4.18.0-041800-generic linux-image-unsigned-4.18.0-041800-generic

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6 responses to How to Install Linux Kernel 4.18 in Ubuntu, Linux Mint

  1. Its work on my LM19. But my plymouth background color changed to white. I already try “update-initramfs -u” but still same. Then i download and used another plymouth (mint logo with green background).

  2. Taylor Buchanan August 18, 2018 at 4:34 am

    Hey Ji M,

    Question: Do you need the headers “all.deb” (in essence, do you need all 4 .deb files or do you only need the 3 that correspond to your architecture?)

    • All 4 debs are required for installing the new kernel on Ubuntu.

      • Taylor Buchanan August 18, 2018 at 9:14 pm

        Thanks for the response. Also found the answer here:
        https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds

        Choose the proper upstream kernel files

        From the below example, if one is using a 64-bit/amd64 architecture you would want those files marked A.
        If you are using a 32-bit/i386 architecture, B.

        A linux-headers-3.14.4-031404-generic_3.14.4-031404.201405130853_amd64.deb
        B linux-headers-3.14.4-031404-generic_3.14.4-031404.201405130853_i386.deb
        AB linux-headers-3.14.4-031404_3.14.4-031404.201405130853_all.deb
        A linux-image-3.14.4-031404-generic_3.14.4-031404.201405130853_amd64.deb
        B linux-image-3.14.4-031404-generic_3.14.4-031404.201405130853_i386.deb

        Interestingly, they left off the modules deb ;)

        • The modules deb is a new kernel package. It was added as Mainline kernel package since Linux 4.16.4 (released 4 months ago). And linux-image deb requires the modules to be installed.

  3. Thank you so much
    We are waiting for the version 4.20