Upgrade to HWE kernel or not?

[Keith]

On 2/10/23 1:55 PM, Tony Arnold wrote:
> I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 on version 5.4 of the kernel. I've no immediate 
> plans for upgrading. I'm wondering what the pros and cons are of 
> installing the HWE kernel. My thinking is that this might give me more 
> up to date drivers and be more robust. ( I currently see random hanging 
> of my system but I've no idea of the cause of this).
> 
> Any thoughts/advice?
> 

Are you running a server or desktop system? With server, staying on 5.4 
is prudent because stability is important (though you're having random 
hangs,so hmm...?) With desktop, updated drivers (especially gpu) and 
more hardware support and compatibility with new hardware products are 
important. It should be noted that had you installed at the 20.04.2 
release, you would already be using the HWE kernels because they're 
default. Plus, with HWE, when you do decide to upgrade to the next LTS 
release, you'll using the same kernel version as 22.04 which is supposed 
to make the upgrade smoother (kernel-wise at least).

-- 
Keith