I have Ubuntu systems and I have an old kernel. I want to upgrade my Linux system kernel. How can I do that? Linux kernel can be upgraded by two ways one way is getting source code compiling and installing it. The second way is by using the package manager to update the kernel. We will look at how to update kernel for different distributions. Keep in mind that upgrade operation needs root privileges.
What Is Linux Kernel?
Linux is actually not a complete operating system. It is just a kernel. Kernel means the low-level part of the operating system which mainly provides system resources to the applications and high-level services. Linux kernel management resources like RAM, CPU, Disk, Input/Output Graphics, etc. Linux kernel also manages processes and user rights.
List Current Linux Kernel
Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Kali
We will use dpkg
command in order to list the currently installed Linux kernel version.
$ dpkg -l | grep "linux-image"

Fedora, CentOS, RedHat
We will use rpm
command in order to list currently install Linux kernel version for Fedora, CentOS, RedHat.
$ yum list installed | grep kernel

Get New Linux Kernel
During the update of the Linux kernel, we need root
privileges so we will use sudo
command with the package management commands yum
and apt
Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Kali
As Linux kernel is named as linux-image
in deb
based distributions we will upgrade all linux-image
packages with the following apt
command.
$ sudo apt-get update linux-image* && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade linux-image*
Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat
And distributions like Fedora, CentOS, RedHat names Linux kernel package as kernel
and we will update the kernel package with the following yum
command.
$ sudo yum update kernel-*
How To Update and Upgrade Linux Kernel? Infografic

Debian command seems wrong. It must be apt-get upgrade
Hi, thanks for your comment. But both apt and apt-get commands are supported by Debian, Ubuntu, Mint etc.
Yeah, but its upgrade not update. 🙂
Cheers!