I’ve been using Endeavour OS for about two weeks now and I’m absolutely in love, however one of the first things I did was to switch to LTS kernel instead, I’m just used to always using LTS kernels with pure Arch and Manjaro.
I used:
sudo pacman -S linux-lts
sudo pacman install linux-lts-headers
So my question is, anyone else using LTS kernels instead? Any improvements with stability?
There are people who are, but my systems don’t benefit.
I still keep a couple of alternatives installed, though (e.g. linux + linux-zen/linuz-ck).
I have used it once for a couple of days until I found out what the real problem was (screen tear after an update). It is good to have a backup (plan b actually) if something goes wrong - but I’m still waiting for anything that isn’t in the fix queue by the time I hear of/experience the ‘problem’
Oh that is good to know! I’m just used to “The old fashioned way”, but I will give akm a try now. Thanks a lot Rick.
Yes it is very handy. It installs the kernels and required headers automatically.
Do you use the arch rolling kernel, or do you go with LTS? What is your preference?
I use the Rolling Kernel and actually this is the first time that i have seen any issues. The 5.8 Kernel was very large and the only issue i have is virtual-box not working installing Arch. It does seem to work installing other Linux distros but not Arch based currently for me anyway. I just switched for now to virt-manager Qemu.
I also wanted to go to the LTS kernel first, since I had done it that way before. But the 5.8 works so well for me that I installed the LTS only as a fallback.
On one of my laptops because of a bizarre external monitor issue that required having the monitor plugged in even if not in use (having a lot of external monitor problems the last few months). Switching to the LTS kernel seems to have solved that.
I’ve always tended to be more of an LTS kernel user. I also use mainline on a couple of computers and I rarely see anything noticeably different in performance or stability.
I’ve started using the linux-ck kernel on my daily driver; I definitely see a performance increase with that kernel on that machine.
I have a laptop that works well with kernel version 4.19, but with any version 5 kernel it has terrible performance. For now, it’s fine to keep it on 4.19, but I’m a bit worried about the future.
On my main laptop I have 3 kernel installed with AKM : the last 5.8, the LTS and the Zen. I switch from one to the other from time to time, just to see if I see a difference but it is more or less the same on this hardware.
It depends a lot of the way you use your hardware, and of the hardware itself.
Today I have boot with the Zen… tomorrow ?
I always use LTS unless hardware is too new and requires latest or there is some feature i can’t live witthouth not available yet (rare) 
I’ve heard of the Zen kernel, but I don’t understand why people use it instead of the LTS OR mainline kernels?
I use zen and have LTS as backup.
I run Arch on a couple of my servers and I use the LTS kernels on them, on my other machines not really. Gimme all those new features
I have seen in a post (don’t remember from who) that the Zen kernel is sometimes more “crispy”, so I installed it to try. I don’t see real difference (but it’s all subjective, I did not run any benchmark) but I like to have more than 1 kernel installed. So I keep it… and use it.
Normally I don’t see any noticeable difference when running a custom/AUR kernel. Only when having a closer look at it and paying close attention do I see differences. Also depends a lot on the hardware and the kernel configuration.
But it’s always a good idea to have more than just one kernel installed, be it Zen or LTS or whatever, gives you an alternative if something breaks on mainline kernel.