Install older Kernel on Garuda

[future-XD]

Installed Garuda Dragonised today . It comes with kernel 6.2.13 default . But i want a older kernel 5.4 or 5.15 . Is it possible ? What is the simplest way if i dont want to rebuild the package ?

[NaN]

It is possible, but it’s not recommended since that would put your system in a partially upgraded state and might bork your system. If you are going to downgrade a kernel you would have to downgrade it’s headers as well since they have the libraries needed to run this kernel. But why this might bork your system? Well dependencies, simply put kernels are not the only things that depend on these libraries but your applications too need them using such old kernel headers might result in several applications not running at all and random glitches all across your system that you might not understand why they are happening.

Important note:
If you still wish to proceed then do so at your own risk.

Garuda comes with the package downgrade preinstalled which can as the name suggest help you downgrade specific packages by pulling it’s older version from arch archive repo as well as your local system pacman cache if it’s available there.

So you can use this command to downgrade both the kernel as well as it’s headers one by one.

As word of advice
Install a backup kernel before attempting this for instance since you are attempting to downgrade the zen kernel install the lts or mainline kernel before doing this. For instance to install the lts kernel

sudo pacman -S linux-lts linux-lts-headers

So that you can still access your system with a different kernel in case you can’t do it with the downgraded one.

[future-XD]

I installed linux-rt-lts kernel and latest version is 5.15.xx . It will not bork my system right ?

[NaN]

Well you are using an entirely different kernel. I was talking about downgrading the current zen kernel that garuda has by default. Anyways I don't think using a different maintained kernel should have any issues provided it is maintained properly.