Hi all,
I know that Suse backports drivers to the current stable kernel in Leap but I have run into situations where I needed to upgrade the kernel for things to work well on newer hardware. For example on my main laptop back when I had 15.1 on it. I upgraded the kernel from the kernel:stable repo because without doing that the wifi didn’t work and it ran super hot. Once I upgraded the kernel it worked fine.
While that did work, I’m not sure if I did things correctly and I have some questions about how I might do that better next time.
My goal would be to retain the default kernel while also having the one from the kernel:stable repo too. I would like both of them to auto-update and retain 2 versions of each so I have fallbacks.
I’m also wondering if I should upgrade the kernel-fireware package while I’m at it. Does that make sense to do?
What is the best way to accomplish all of that?
Or maybe I’m on the completely wrong track and there is a much better way to get support for the latest hardware in Leap. I know there is Tumbleweed and while it’s GREAT actually I would rather stick with Leap and just upgrade a few things to bring in better hardware support when I need it for newer hardware.
Thanks!
I use kernel:stable on Leap 15.2 with broadcom-wl, r8168, virtualbox and Nvidia drivers without having problems.
Usually installing kernel from kernel:stable means purging standard kernels.
Kernels from kernel:stable requires new Linux firmwares also. You may use new firmwares with a standard kernel.
Good way is to use 2 Leap installations: one for kernels from kernel:stable and other stuff, another for standard packages.
Otherwise you need to perform manual corrections to get updates for both kernels.
But maybe you can use new hardware without installing new kernels from kernel:stable repo?
You may use drivers not from Linux kernel.
That won’t work using standard tools. First, at any time package is associated with specific repository and is updated from this repository. You can switch from standard to kernel:stable and retain currently installed kernels from standard repository but they won’t be updated automatically. And you will already have higher version number anyway, so they won’t even be considered as “updates”. You can install from standard update repository manually though.
and retain 2 versions of each so I have fallbacks.
multiversion.kernels = oldest, oldest+1, latest-1, latest
As can be seen, it is just about versions, not where these versions come from. There is no way to request “keep the last two versions from each repository”.
I’m also wondering if I should upgrade the kernel-fireware package while I’m at it. Does that make sense to do?
Firmware is requested by drivers and some drivers may have a range of firmware versions they support and try to load. So too new kernel-firmware simply may not have versions needed by too old kernel (and vice versa).
Just wanted to say thanks for all the answers. That helped me understand a lot of this. I’m just going to use the following instructions except I’ll use Stable instead of HEAD.
https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/reference/html/book-opensuse-reference/cha-tuning-multikernel.html