Ubuntu Mainline Kernel Installer

A tool for installing the latest Linux kernels from the ubuntu mainline ppa onto debian-based distributions.

About

mainline is a fork of ukuu

Changes

• Changed name from "ukuu" to "mainline"
• Removed all GRUB / bootloader options
• Removed all donate buttons, links, dialogs
• Removed un-related/un-used code
• Better temp and cache management
• Better desktop notification behavior
• Reduced dependencies and system() (still ongoing)
• Notes
• Slow but ongoing re-writes of most parts

Features

• Download the list of available kernels from the Ubuntu Mainline PPA
• Display, install, uninstall, available and installed kernels conveniently, gui and cli
• For each kernel, the related headers & modules packages are automatically grouped and installed or uninstalled at the same time
• Optionally monitor and send desktop notifications when new kernels become available

Not Features

• Care if the kernels run or boot or are compatible with your system beyond the basic plaform arch and whatever dependencies the .deb packages declare and dpkg enforces. The mainline-ppa kernel deb packages are produced with no warranty. When they work, great, when they don't, don't use them. This app intentionally does not even touch a single grub or bootloader file itself. All it does is download .deb packages that the ubuntu kernel team authors, and runs dpkg to install them the same way you would manually.

Install

The PPA is kindly maintained by cappelikan

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cappelikan/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mainline

There is also usually a single reference .deb package in releases, generated by make release_deb
but it is usually not current.

Build

sudo apt install libgee-0.8-dev libjson-glib-dev libvte-2.91-dev valac aria2 lsb-release make gettext dpkg-dev
git clone https://github.com/bkw777/mainline.git
cd mainline
make
sudo make install

Usage

Look for System -> Ubuntu Mainline Kernel Installer in your desktop's Applications/Start menu.

Otherwise:
CLI

$ mainline --help
$ mainline

GUI

$ mainline-gtk

Note that neither of those commands invoked sudo or pkexec or other su-alike.
The app runs as the user and uses pkexec internally just for the dpkg command.

Buttons

[ Install ] - downloads and installs the selected kernel

[ Uninstall ] - uninstalls the selected kernel(1)

[ PPA ] - launches your default https:// handler to the web page for the selected kernel
If no kernels are selected (when first launching the app before clicking on any) launches the main page listing all the kernels.
Use this to see the build summary and CHANGES files.

[ Uninstall Old ] - uninstalls all installed kernels below the latest installed version(1)

[ Reload ] - deletes, re-downloads, and re-reads the local cached copies of all the index.html's from the mainline-ppa web site, and regenerates the displayed list.
Management of these files has been a problem with this app in the past due to various spaghetti code and permissions issues.
This is much more reliable now, but there can still be glitches from bad downloads or sometimes the upstream contents change after your copy was downloaded. For instance a kernel might be invalid when you happened to first cache it, and then later become valid (failed build that later succeeded), but your local cached info about that kernel doesn't know it, etc.
Normally the app avoids re-downloading things as much as possible for speed and annoyance reasons. The main index is always re-downloaded at least once every start-up, but the individual pages for each kernel are cached and never re-downloaded by default, only new/missing ones are downloaded.
That can lead to some files being stale or wrong over time, so, to compensate for that, this button just makes it as convenient as possible to force a full re-load any time you want.

[ Settings ] - access the settings dialog to configure various options

[ About ] - basic info and credits

[ Exit ] - order pizza

(1) In all cases the currently running kernel is protected and the app will not uninstall the currently running kernel.
For the single manual uninstall button, the button simply isn't activated. For the cli app if you manually give that version, it will simply ignore it. For uninstall-old, either gui or cli, the currently running kernel is simply skipped over when scanning and building the list of uninstall candidates.

Clicking on the Notes field allows to attach arbitrary text to a kernel.

Help / FAQ

• General debugging
  Aside from the --debug option, there is an environment variable VERBOSE, which takes a numerical value from 0 and up.
  Example: $ VERBOSE=3 mainline-gtk
  0 = silence all output
  1 = normal output (default)
  2 = --debug
  3 = more verbose
  4 = even more
  5+ mostly just for uncommenting things in the code and recompiling, not really useful in the release builds

• Uninstall Old doesn't remove some distribution kernel packages
  Use the normal package manager like apt or synaptic to remove the parent meta-package:
  $ sudo apt remove linux-image-generic
  Then Uninstall Old should successfully remove everything.
  Also you should hit the Reload button once after that (or run $ mainline --delete-cache)

• Secure Boot
  Possibly useful, I have not tried:
  https://github.com/M-P-P-C/Signing-a-Linux-Kernel-for-Secure-Boot

• Kernel versions 5.15.7+ and libssl3
  Install libssl3

• Missing kernels
  Failed or incomplete builds for your platform/arch are not shown.
  If you think the list is missing something, and the "Reload" button didn't make it appear, press the "PPA" button to jump to the mainline-ppa web site where the .deb packages come from, and look at the build results for the missing kernel, and you will usually find that it is a failed or incomplete build for your arch, and can not be installed.

TODO & WIP

• Add some extra info into the version strings used for display and --install etc, to better handle multiple kernels of the same main version but from different sources, and other differences like builds and platform/feature options etc
• Replace system("aria2c ...") with libsoup or libcurl or similar
• Make the background process for notifications detect when the user logs out of the desktop session and exit itself
• Move the notification/dbus code from the current shell script into the app and make an "applet" mode
• Combine the gtk and cli apps into one, or, make the gtk app into a pure front-end for the cli app, either way
• Replace the commandline parser
• Toggle display of invalid kernels so you could at least see they aren't simply missing, and use the "PPA" button too
• UI quick toggle for show/hide unstable/-rc kernels instead of going to settings
• Right-click menu for more functions for a given kernel, such as reloading the cache just for a single kernel to check for new build status etc, without adding 18 buttons all over the ui.
• Support all installable kernel variants, not just "-generic"
• Add commandline flags to override all settings. Currently the filter settings also control the cli output, but the cli has no way to change settings.