Installing Linux 5.14 Kernel on Debian 11

The kernel plays a significant role, and although the kernel is pretty fresh in Debian 11, chances are it won’t suit you for some reason. Moreover, the 5.14 kernel contains many changes that are likely to affect Debian for the better. Of the main changes in the 5.14 kernel, we can note improved support for AMD Ryzen processors, the btrfs file system has been optimized, for Lenovo laptops a added WMI interface for changing BIOS settings has been , support for Dell Hardware Privacy, and support for Intel Alder Lake P graphics has been added in the 5.14 kernel and much more,

At the end of the article, consider the moment when you want to install Debian 11 with a default kernel that does not support modern hardware.

Installing the 5.14 kernel on Debian 11 Bullseye

Before we start installing the 5.14 kernel, let’s first update our system. This is done by the well-known commands:

sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade

If for some reason your user is not added to the “sudo” group, The next step is to edit the sources.list file, for editing we will use the text editor Nano, Well, we start editing the repository file, open it:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

In the file that opens, go down to the bottom and enter the unstable Debian repositories, for clarity, I have highlighted the added repositories and marked them as “Kernel 5.14”:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free 
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free

Save the edited “sources.list” file with the keyboard shortcut “ctrl + o” and exit the Nano editor with “ctrl + x”. The next step is to secure ourselves from updating other packages except the kernel from unstable repositories, for this we will create a file “ preferences”:

sudo nano /etc/apt/preferences

Enter the following content into the created file, and also save the file and exit the editor – “ctrl + o” и “ctrl + x”:

Package: *
Pin: release a=bullseye
Pin-Priority: 500

Package: linux-image-amd64
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 1000

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 100

Now all that remains is to perform system updates with the commands

sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

Then we reboot the system and check the result. You can check the kernel version with the commands:

uname -r

uname -a

Conclusion

In such a non-tricky way, we updated the kernel in Debian 11 to version 5.14. Whether it is worth updating the kernel or not, everyone decides for himself, here the truth can play a role namely hardware support or personal preferences. In the case when Debian cannot be installed due to the fact that the kernel does not support your hardware, for example, there is no support for AMD processors, in this case, you can install the minimum assembly, and then upgrade the kernel to version 5.14. And then you can already roll up the graphical interface,

And that’s all for today, I hope this article will be useful to you.
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