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I've been using Ubuntu 20.04 in a very old computer (with a very old nVidia card) for a long time without problems, until it was automatically updated to Kernel version 5.13.

I don't know what, but something is definitely broken in the Kernel 5.13 that causes several issues:

  • nVidia card not working correctly (can't login to desktop, screen stays completely blank).
  • form time to time the filesystem automatically goes into read-only mode and the only solution is to reboot the machine.

I didn't spend much time looking for solutions to those issues, because I still had the option to boot using Kernel 5.8, which worked perfectly.

But now Kernel 5.8 disappeared from Grub's list, and it only allows me to choose between 5.13 versions.

How can I bring Kernel 5.8 back and prevent automatic upgrades from removing it?

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You can reinstall kernel 5.8 by running the following command but that really won't fix your problem.

sudo apt install linux-image-5.8.0-63-generic linux-headers-5.8.0-63-generic

After you reboot, kernel 5.8 will be available in your Grub menu. Most likely, you ran sudo apt autoremove or something similar which removed the older kernel version as the linux-image-generic-hwe-20.04 package changes dependencies when a newer kernel is released.


To search for packages, you can use:

apt-cache search linux-image-5.8
apt-cache search linux-headers-5.8

and to narrow the results, you can use grep:

apt-cache search linux-image-5.8 | grep generic
apt-cache search linux-headers-5.8 | grep generic

But you really should install the proprietary Nvidia driver using:

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

to prevent problems with upgrades.

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    I tried re-installing older kernels that way, and they show up in Grub now, but even with those older kernels the screen just goes blank after the splash, and can't login to the desktop. ubuntu-drivers autoinstall does nothing except informing that some packages can be autoremoved. I already had the nvidia-340 driver installed. I don't know what else to do.
    – Simón
    Feb 28, 2022 at 23:43
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    Well, I found this, and followed instructions to downgrade to kernel 5.4, and reinstall the nvidia drivers. It's not ideal, but at least now it's working.
    – Simón
    Mar 1, 2022 at 5:52

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