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I have a desktop and a laptop machine, both of which run Ubuntu 20.04.1 and I regularly use the software updater. Until the 5th of this month both machines had kernel versions in sync, namely both updated to 5.4.0-59.

On the 7th the desktop updated to version 5.8.0-34, on the laptop the updater showed that all was up to date and nothing needed doing.

Today (the 8th) the desktop has updated to 5.8.0-36, the laptop to 5.4.0-60. Thus the desktop is on the 5.8 chain and the laptop remains on the 5.4 chain. please can anyone tell me why this is?

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  • Update schedules can be set within the "Software and Updates" application, with security updates applied on a different schedule to the others. Alternatively, one device may be following a different "track" than the other. Could you update your question to include the output of uname -rv from both machines?
    – user1091774
    Jan 12, 2021 at 12:33
  • I know about the schedules, both were in sync until the 5th Jan as they had the same schedules. The kernel versions that I posted were correct as returned bu uname -a on each machine.
    – NickT
    Jan 12, 2021 at 13:24

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This is really confusing, but this is was always this way.

Obviously you installed Ubuntu to the desktop using the 20.04.1 iso image, that had linux-generic-hwe-20.04 package installed. At that time iot was pointing o the same kernel as linux-generic. Both were 5.4.

Recently linux-generic-hwe-20.04 was upgraded in the repos and pulled the 5.8 kernel.

But you installed Ubuntu to the laptop using the 20.04 "pointless" iso. It never had linux-generic-hwe-20.04 and it stayed on the 5.4 kernel.

You can easily change it either way if you want to have the same kernel version.

It is confusing a bit because both have 20.04.1 current version showing. But this is how HWE is supposed to work... Almost. This time thay made some mess with it.

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  • The laptop upgraded automatically from 16.04, through 18.04 to 20.04 at the LTS date. The desktop had an ISO image from the Ubuntu site. I don't know what iot signifies other than "internet of things".
    – NickT
    Jan 13, 2021 at 14:12
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    This is an expected behavior.
    – Pilot6
    Jan 14, 2021 at 19:48

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