Hello, friends. In this post, we will help you to install kernel 5.13 on Rocky Linux 8 / AlmaLinux 8 /. This post is oriented to users that use this system on the desktop and have some modern hardware.
CentOS is one of the most solid and stable distribution that there is, but this has a price to dispose of old packages. And one of them is the Linux kernel.
Currently, if you want to install Rocky Linux 8 / AlmaLinux 8 / CentOS 8, you will have to install version 4.18 and this is a problem for recent hardware. One case of this is AMD’s Ryzen processors that with each new version of the kernel have seen an improvement in performance and support. So, if you install Rocky Linux 8 / AlmaLinux 8 / CentOS 8 and your hardware is recent, it’s a good idea to do a kernel upgrade.
In this sense, the 5.13 kernel is supported by the Rocky Linux 8 / AlmaLinux 8 / CentOS 8 community. This guarantees an easy and safe installation. Also, this kernel is frequently patched by the community team bringing even more stability.
So, let’s do it.
Install Kernel 5.13 on Rocky Linux 8 / AlmaLinux 8 /CentOS 8
Many people like to have the latest kernel installed so they can get the most out of the hardware they have. That’s why it’s in their best interest to know how to do it.
So, open a terminal and upgrade your distribution
sudo dnf update
You can execute these commands as the root user or with a sudo user.
Thanks to an external repository called elrepo
we can have different versions of the kernel. For example, in this repository, we can install the latest available kernel or the LTS version of it. That is, the repository is very well maintained.
So, to add it to the system, just run the following command:
sudo dnf install https://www.elrepo.org/elrepo-release-8.el8.elrepo.noarch.rpm
It then adds the GPG key from the repository in order to ensure that the packages are adequate and to indicate to the system that it is reliable.
sudo rpm --import https://www.elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org
And now yes, install the 5.13 kernel by running the following command.
We will also install some packages needed to develop with the kernel such as headers and devel.
sudo dnf --enablerepo=elrepo-kernel install kernel-ml kernel-ml-devel kernel-ml-headers
At the end of the installation, restart the system
When you start again, check the changes:
uname -r 5.13.7-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64
So, you already have the 5.13 kernel on CentOS 8.
Conclusion
The Linux kernel is an essential part of our system. Therefore, it is advisable to be careful when installing it. In addition, it is only recommended to install it if you have hardware failures or if you have a very recent one.