I asked this on the Mint forum some time ago but did not receive an answer. I have a new Mint 19.1 installation. I ran sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade -y; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y. In the case of Ubuntu this will upgrade everything including the kernel. Not so in Mint it seems. Update Manager still shows kernel 4.15.0.50 available in the official repo. uname tells me I am at 4.15.0-20.

Yes, I can upgrade the kernel with Update Manager. I should be able to do it at the command line. This is Linux, not windoze.

Any ideas?

TIA,

Ken

Replace the version number below with the kernel version that you want to install:

Thanks hydrurga,

That approach would certainly do the trick. It would make sense if I wished to precisely control the kernel version which I was running. For a general user... seems rather cumbersome just to get to the latest "official" version. Installing via the Update Manager GUI seems to interact with the snapshot process which is OK if that is desired. Other distros generally keep an old kernel or two which can be selected with grub. Just a bit of a strange behavior for the package manager to my mind.

Ken

Mint was always developed as a desktop distro, which is why GUI-based solutions are preferred for it.

Mint 19.1 keeps two kernels through the Update Manager, the current one and the previous one, both of which can be selected through Grub.

What do you mean regarding the Update Manager interacting with the snapshot process? Do you mean the reminder it gives you if you haven't set up snapshots? If so, you can turn that off with Edit->Preferences->Options: Show a warning if system snapshots are not set up.

Thanks again hydrurga,

I agree Mint is aimed at the desktop user and as such it is GREAT. I am just used to manually initiating updates, especially on a virtual machine which I might only bring up occasionally.

I had a comment on the Mint forum when I asked the question which opined that by using the GUI update tool and snapshots it might prevent one from installing a non-working kernel and getting stuck. I handle that concern myself thank you but it IS a good idea for the desktop user. Just a curiosity.

Thanks again,

Ken

Ah, I see. Yes, Mint's Update Manager used to focus on grading updates according to their possible adverse effects on the system (safe->not so safe). That was always strange to me as I used to do all my upgrading through the command line anyway, where you just upgrade everything. The problem, I think, was that it made some folk nervous and, as a result, they weren't updating software that needed updating because it was in the "not so safe" category.

So, a rethink resulted in the Update Manager updating everything by default along with TimeShift being introduced so that folk could revert to a previous TimeShift snapshot if an update did cause problems. A much better approach in my opinion.

So, TimeShift isn't really interacting with the Update Manager, it's just being used as another tool in conjunction with the Update Manager (and doesn't need to be either, you can just take your chances if you so wish, or use another method to make regular system backups/images).

I suppose, going back to your original question, Mint could have developed a command-line interface for the Update Manager that mimicked its functionality, but as far as I can see they haven't done that. It's probably a question of resources being pointed at where they are most needed, along with the GUI-oriented philosophy. Anyway, package updates can be done through the command line, although as you pointed out, kernels are a particular exception and need the distro to employ certain tricks to keep a certain number of rolling kernels installed at any one time. There are virtual kernel packages available in the Ubuntu repositories that point at the latest kernel version, but then, without trickery, you would only have one kernel installed with no fallback.

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Thank you hydrurga for a very insightful post.

Ken