Arch Linux User Repository

These packages allow you to have multiple versions of the Arch LTS kernel installed simultaneously. The intended use is to install the linux-lts-versioned-bin (and linux-lts-versioned-headers-bin if you use out-of-tree drivers) metapackage, using an AUR helper or otherwise in a way that automatically processes dependencies. This metapackage depends on the latest LTS versioned kernel package, but older kernel packages will remain on your system as orphaned packages to be removed later. You can find and remove them with the remove-orphaned-kernels script, which will uninstall orphaned kernel packages except those corresponding to the kernel that is currently running. If you use GRUB, you will also need to ensure its config is updated after kernels are added or removed. Installing the grub-hook package will ensure this is done automatically.

To switch from the regular Arch kernel package to these versioned packages, you can do the following (using the AUR helper yay for example):

# Remove linux, linux-headers if installed, and any out-of-tree drivers for the regular kernel:
$ pacman -Rs linux-lts [linux-lts-headers] [nvidia-lts] [...]
# Install dkms versions of any out-of-tree drivers you need:
$ pacman -S [nvidia-dkms] [...]
# If using GRUB, install grub-hook before installing kernels:
$ yay -S grub-hook
# Install the kernel metapackage, and headers metapackage if you use out-of-tree drivers:
$ yay -S linux-lts-versioned-bin [linux-lts-versioned-headers-bin]

This is also discussed here.

See also:

• linux-versioned-bin

• linux-zen-versioned-bin

• linux-hardened-versioned-bin

seeing some weird issues installing the latest packages with yay:

==> Checking for packaging issues...
==> Creating package "linux-lts-versioned-bin"...
  -> Generating .PKGINFO file...
  -> Generating .BUILDINFO file...
  -> Generating .MTREE file...
  -> Compressing package...

zstd: can't stat 0 : No such file or directory -- ignored 
==> ERROR: Failed to create package file.
 -> error making: linux-lts-versioned-bin (linux5.10.81-1-lts-bin linux-lts-versioned-bin linux5.10.81-1-lts-headers-bin linux-lts-versioned-headers-bin)

not really sure what this indicates, but yeah, can't upgrade to .81.

@G3ro, I've reverted the change, apologies for that. It indeed defeats the whole purpose.

For what it's worth, here are two unusual things about this PKGBUILD that pamac might choke on:

1. I don't bump the pkgrel when I make changes (which is rare - this latest change was the first in a long time) - the version does not increase until the next upstream kernel is released, this is in order to make this package match arch linux-lts kernel package versions exactly.

2. The sources array is dynamically determined based on whether the kernel packages are available from your own mirror, falling back to the arch linux archive if not.

The newest version: 5.10.79-1 wants to remove former installed kernel packages: 5.10.78 & 5.10.77 in my case.

I assume it is related to the latest commit: https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/commit/?h=linux-lts-versioned-bin&id=ca5808cc839bd043e6f0d95b75f10f34480ed586

Update: I just reverted that commit and it works again as expected.

Note: I tried to install it via pamac and pacman, both show the described behavior.

Also: It seems that I can't install & upgrade the packages through pamac GUI anymore. It shows: "Could not generate information for package linux-lts-versioned-bin". I assume the error is on pamacs side, so I filed a bug report there as well.

This package was flagged out of date, but the latest linux-lts in [core] is not newer, so it's not out of date yet. There's a newer lts kernel in [testing], but this package only tracks what's in [core].

These packages allow you to have multiple versions of the Arch LTS kernel installed simultaneously. The intended use is to install the linux-lts-versioned-bin (and linux-lts-versioned-headers-bin if you use out-of-tree drivers) metapackage, using an AUR helper or otherwise in a way that automatically processes dependencies. This metapackage depends on the latest LTS versioned kernel package, but older kernel packages will remain on your system as orphaned packages to be removed later. You can find and remove them with the remove-orphaned-kernels script, which will uninstall orphaned kernel packages except those corresponding to the kernel that is currently running. If you use GRUB, you will also need to ensure its config is updated after kernels are added or removed. Installing the grub-hook package will ensure this is done automatically.

To switch from the regular Arch kernel package to these versioned packages, you can do the following (using the AUR helper yay for example):

# Remove linux, linux-headers if installed, and any out-of-tree drivers for the regular kernel:
$ pacman -Rs linux-lts [linux-lts-headers] [nvidia-lts] [...]
# Install dkms versions of any out-of-tree drivers you need:
$ pacman -S [nvidia-dkms] [...]
# If using GRUB, install grub-hook before installing kernels:
$ yay -S grub-hook
# Install the kernel metapackage, and headers metapackage if you use out-of-tree drivers:
$ yay -S linux-lts-versioned-bin [linux-lts-versioned-headers-bin]

This is also discussed here.

See also:

• linux-versioned-bin

• linux-zen-versioned-bin

• linux-hardened-versioned-bin