How to upgrade JUST the kernel?

Question

I am trying to upgrade my kernel, but I would like to avoid updating all of the packages that a sudo apt-get dist-upgrade causes. I am running Ubuntu 14.04, if that matters. Is there a way to only upgrade the kernel?

Solution

You can upgrade just the kernel by running the following command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install linux-image-generic

If you need headers for building kernel modules as well, you can also install them like so:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install linux-generic

It will update both linux-image-generic & linux-headers-generic.

Comments

[Pilot6]

linux-generic will install headers as well. And it is a typo anyway. The headers package is linux-headers-generic.

[ianorlin]

Isn't this not the correct command for Hardware enablement stacks as well as if you need say 14.04.5 won't this install the regular 14.04 kernel?