Dear Friends,
Due to necessity to keep nvidia drive 535, I must avoid any newer kernels, so kernel is locked. Now, I want to use 24.04 until end of life, as that will certainly be longer than the end of mine. How can I avoid to prompts to udate, while receving the latest things I need, such as Evolution, browsers, &c?
In short, stay on 24.04 but all updates not affecting kernel or basic drivers.
Best,
M
In the past I’ve done this the hacky way by backing up the kernel files from /boot and from /lib/modules, then upgrading to u26.04 and putting back the kernel files!
I am in a similar situation regarding both personal life support and drivers not being accepted by the latest kernels.
I purchased a laptop with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS pre-installed. It has a supplier keyboard driver that adds extra functions. I was not sure if that driver would work in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. So, I took out a Ubuntu Pro subscription which gives Extended Security Maintenance for an extra five years.
Ubuntu Pro subscriptions are free for ordinary users and for up to five machines/installations.
The Ubuntu Pro publicity and application page
Software Updater will remove older kernels when bringing in a newer kernels. Update/upgrade using the terminal. All older kernels are kept. We load into an older kernel using Advanced Options for Ubuntu and selecting the older kernel we want.
Regards
Ubuntu Support Template
Ubuntu Version:
24.04
Desktop Environment (if applicable):
Mate
Problem Description:
I cannot use software updater to install updates automatically without getting an upgrade to 26.04 message, and that will upgrade to 26.04.
I have change notification of new version to “never” in dropdown to no effect, and now it is telling me that I am running a manually installed driver for nvidia. Apparently, I am being told by ubuntu to upgrade or die, so to speak. I want all updates fronm 24.04, but to not want to upgrade.
Is this a fault of the auto updater? That is the only reason I use ubuntu instead of straght debian. Ironically, on older laptop, all is well, so it is just this one laptop.
Worse yet, the software updates is telling me there are no proprietary drivers in use, when ls mod and glx info are showing the nvidia module loaded and working.
All I want is the kernel pinned, the driver pinned, but latest verions of things like
evolution, browsers, libreoffice, to be available automatically. This is just as bad as dependency hell, which is what ubuntu used to avoid. (yes, i have run linux for well over 20 years, not used windows in that time, and loathe mac!)
What to do?
Thank you all for your patience!
I changed the title to make it less like some form of clickbait.
Please confirm you are actually using Ubuntu MATE and not regular Ubuntu.
Thanks
Edit: and it looks like you started a duplicate topic in Support and Help?
Please don’t do that. It makes more work for the moderators and dilutes community efforts to assist you.
Topics merged.
Dear R,
Yes, I am running mate, and it is a big change to have lost the separate forum, so please excuse me. The reason I use ubuntu instead of debian is to avoid the dependency hell.
In order to avoid a conflict between kernel and driver in the latest kernel, I pinned both kernel and driver. this was not necessary on different machines, so not sure why doing that would result in the current situation of describing the nvidia 535 driver being described as installed manually, so that is issue #1.
It may be that that now, nvidia 580 will support the 3500 RTX chip, or that simply we cannot know until we try.
This is the reason why I posted to the people who used to populate the Mate support forum. Sorry if I did not understand that the world of Ubuntu has changed. Publicly scolding people means we may not ask for help.
We are all aware that Ubuntu was a way to freeload off canonical. We get the best devs in the world, and pay nothing.
Being a 30 year linux user, 20 with ubuntu to avoid unneccessary work others have already done, I was merely trying to get help from people who may know more than others about the interaction of the desktop with the gui.
So, did my pinning the kernel and driver change anything? And why did the interface change on one laptop, because of a rather unusual situation with graphics card and driver, when this was resolved until two days ago automatically by the updater? Does the updater no longer recognise the older driver? The original issue being Nvdia’s API versis kernel 7.xxx is that now resolved? Does the newer 580 driver support the RTX3500 quadro, as per the Nvidia site?(one never had to check this until now, as that work was already done automatically by updater)
If I pin a kernal and driver module, will that be the exegesis of the problem with the updater no longer doing what I need it to do?
In essence, if only allowed one post, should I, in the future include a tonne of information that is only relevant to people from different parts of the coding community?
Shortest way to say what I want:
I want to pin kernel and driver, but get all the latest updates to things I use for work, i e, browser, evolution, &c. Is this possible in general?
Thank you for your help. It is different now than a few years ago, and adjustment takes time.
Best,
Maritn
That upgrade shouldn’t be offered at all until 26.04.1 is released in late August. Unless something has changed this is my understanding. I’ve not been offered it on on any of my Mate 24.04 machines.
That would be the proper thing to do in order not receive notifications to upgrade to the next LTS release. Regardless that upgrade shouldn’t be offered at all yet.
Here’s a thread that may be worth taking a look at though it would seem at the time it may only been happening to installs within a VM:
Couple of posts down it says “on 24.04 LTS being not a VM”.
Then that certainly makes the post even more relevant then.
Sure, but all this topic says is “lubuntu may prematurely prompt for LTS upgrade” without any workaround or solution.
Not gonna argue with you. Just pointing OP in a possibly helpful direction.
Sorry, this is not true. I am doing just that, semi-regular sudo apt upgrade --update on top of unattended-upgrades (*-security only), and older kernels get pruned just the same. I am not quite sure what is responsible for doing this, because the method seems to have changed (pointers welcome).
But that shouldn’t be a problem anyway, because the currently running kernel will always be among the keepers. Once a newer kernel is running sucessfully, i.e. for longer than just a regression check, there is no need to keep the older one on the next upgrade.
The old kernels are not pruned by simply running apt uprgade. They would be pruned by running apt autoremove.
Do you have any evidence that apt upgrade removes old kernels?
The kernels most likely are removed by unattended-upgrade script which (at least, by default) runs daily. From /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades.log.1.gz:
2026-07-10 21:40:09,564 INFO Packages that will be upgraded: bpftool curl gzip heif-gdk-pixbuf heif-thumbnailer hplip hplip-data libcurl3t64-gnutls libcurl4t64 libheif-plugin-aomdec libheif-plugin-aomenc libheif-plugin-j2kdec libheif-plugin-libde265 libheif-plugin-x265 libheif1 libhpmud0 libidn12 libnghttp2-14 libnss3 libperl5.40 libpython3.14 libpython3.14-minimal libpython3.14-stdlib libraw23t64 libsane-hpaio libsqlite3-0 libssh2-1t64 libvncclient1 linux-generic-hwe-24.04 linux-generic-hwe-26.04 linux-headers-generic-hwe-26.04 linux-image-generic-hwe-26.04 linux-libc-dev linux-perf linux-tools-common perl perl-base perl-modules-5.40 printer-driver-hpcups printer-driver-postscript-hp python3.14 python3.14-gdbm python3.14-minimal socat tar vim vim-common vim-runtime vim-tiny xxd
2026-07-10 21:40:09,569 INFO Writing dpkg log to /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades-dpkg.log
2026-07-10 21:41:30,381 INFO All upgrades installed
2026-07-10 21:41:48,091 INFO Packages that were successfully auto-removed: linux-headers-7.0.0-15 linux-headers-7.0.0-15-generic linux-image-7.0.0-15-generic linux-main-modules-zfs-7.0.0-15-generic linux-modules-7.0.0-15-generic linux-tools-7.0.0-15 linux-tools-7.0.0-15-generic
While the current kernel is kept, older kernels are pruned immediately. There is no grace period. Conceivably there could be a sequence of events
N is runningN+1 is installed and becomes running kernelN+1 could surface, the kernel N+2 arrives and the kernel N is removedN+1 and N+2 is found, but it is too lateYou cannot expect every regression to be found immediately on the next boot.
It is possible to increase NeverAutoRemove::KernelCount to keep more kernels. Or simply exclude kernels from auto-removal with NeverAutoRemove setting.