Ubuntu – the linux-image-extra package for and do I need it

kernel

I occasionally update my kernel from this web site
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

I have been always downloading 3 deb files for installing
linux header all, linux image and linux headers. I noticed one more deb file recently for 64 bit kernel called Linux-image-extra.

I would like to know what does kernel file Linux-image-extra do and should I also install it?

Best Answer

This answer is obsolete for modern Ubuntu releases

Without the extra package, most hardware won't work!

It contains extra drivers left out of the base kernel package; install it only if you need these drivers

Sometimes, a specific variant of the linux-image is slimmed down by removing the less common kernel modules (drivers). In this case, the linux-image-extra package simply contains all of the "extra" kernel modules which were left out.

  • Officially, this only happens for the -virtual image; the most common hypervisors (Virtualbox, VMWare, Xen, KVM) emulate a well-defined and restricted set of hardware, so removing unnecessary drivers which increase the size of the kernel/initrd is a good idea. You can always get them back by installing the extras package.

  • The kernel team also appears to have adopted this method for some of the mainline-PPA -generic kernels; the reasoning and solution remain the same -- if it looks like the base kernel image is missing a module you need, install extras.

  • As far as I know, the above approach has not been taken for the Quantal kernels -- only -virtual is affected as usual.

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