Switch to LTS kernel on Arch Linux

Current setup:

  • Arch Linux
  • Nvidia proprietary driver
  • Syslinux bootloader

Switch to LTS kernel

Install LTS kernel

pacman -S linux-lts linux-lts-headers nvidia-lts

Edit bootloader (I use syslinux btw)

/boot/efi/EFI/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
LABEL arch_lts
    MENU LABEL Arch Linux LTS
-   LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
+   LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux-lts
    # https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA#DRM_kernel_mode_setting    
    APPEND ... nvidia_drm.modeset=1 nvidia_drm.fbdev=1
-   INITRD ../initramfs-linux.img
+   INITRD ../initramfs-linux-lts.img

Edit pacman hook

From arch docs: To avoid the possibility of forgetting to update initramfs after an NVIDIA driver upgrade, you may want to use a pacman hook:

/etc/pacman.d/hooks/nvidia.hook
[Trigger]

- Target=nvidia
+ Target=nvidia-lts
- Target=linux
+ Target=linux-lts

Ensure nvidia modules are loaded early

/etc/mkinitcpio.conf
# https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA#Early_loading
MODULES=(... nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)

Rebuild initramfs

mkinitcpio -p linux-lts

EFI Update

In both cases you may want to update your EFI files. See Automatically update EFI files after kernel update.