Is it possible to have kernel newer than 5.4 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with Nvidia driver active?

I see that only kernel version 5.4 is available for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS by HWE package named linux-image-generic-hwe-18.04.

It is known that Mainline kernels will not work with Nvidia drivers from Ubuntu repository.

How can I obtain newer kernel version?

Solution 1:

It is possible by downloading kernel sources from newer Ubuntu release - say Ubuntu 21.10 (impish) using relevant Docker container and then compile kernel on target 18.04 LTS system with small modifications as follows:

mkdir -p ~/Downloads/impish-kernel

Then place below code into compile-impish-kernel.sh script inside ~/Downloads/impish-kernel directory by using any text-editor:

#!/bin/bash
# prepare download script
cat << EOF > script.sh
set -x

sed -i "s/# deb-src/deb-src/g" /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update && \
apt-get install -y dpkg-dev
cd && apt-get source linux
chown -R 1000:1000 linux* 
EOF

# run script inside container
docker run --rm -v ${PWD}:/root -it ubuntu:impish sh /root/script.sh

cd linux-5.13.0
echo 9 > debian/compat
LANG=C fakeroot debian/rules clean

sed -i "s/^CONFIG_KASAN/#CONFIG_KASAN/" debian.master/config/annotations
sed -i "s/^CONFIG_KCSAN/#CONFIG_KCSAN/" debian.master/config/annotations
LANG=C fakeroot debian/rules binary-headers binary-generic binary-perarch

ls ../linux-headers-5.13*.deb ../linux-image-unsigned-5.13*.deb ../linux-modules-*.deb

Run the script by

chmod +x compile-impish-kernel.sh
./compile-impish-kernel.sh

and finally install 5.13 kernel packages by

sudo apt-get install ./linux-headers-5.13*.deb ./linux-image-unsigned-5.13*.deb ./linux-modules-*.deb

As the result the 5.13 kernel will be installed. Nvidia driver will operate normally.