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Ubuntu: Build your own kernel

Ubuntu: Build your own kernel

Thursday, October 15, 2026

Introduction

For whatever reason the (old) Ubuntu wiki pages no longer exists, for instance https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/FAQ no longer works. The old archives are available at https://github.com/ubuntu/wiki-archives.

The reason for this post is that I wanted to apply a total of 56 patches, as per the messages to the mailing list https://sashiko.dev/#/patchset/20261012035806.3361439-1-ankit.k.nautiyal%40intel.com, to the Linux kernel as these patches were not likely to land in Ubuntu’s kernel anytime soon. The patches enable 120Hz refresh rate over HDMI 2.1 with certain Intel chips, without the patches, the refresh rate is limited to 60Hz over HDMI 2.1.

Prerequisites

Prior to running the below, make sure you have done what is on https://ubuntu.com/kernel/docs/how-to/source-code/enable-source-repositories/. If you are on, say, resolute after following the above instructions the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources file should end up like below:

$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources
Types: deb
URIs: http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
Suites: resolute resolute-updates resolute-backports
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg

Types: deb
URIs: http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
Suites: resolute-security
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg

Types: deb deb-src
URIs: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
Suites: resolute resolute-updates resolute-backports
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg

If you want a one-liner, then it is:

sudo sed -i 's/Types: deb$/Types: deb deb-src/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources
sudo apt update

Consult https://ubuntu.com/kernel/docs/how-to/develop-customise/build-kernel/ and https://github.com/ubuntu/wiki-archives/blob/main/UbuntuWiki/K/Kernel-BuildYourOwnKernel.wiki if anything goes wrong, that said the steps are:

sudo apt build-dep linux linux-image-unsigned-$(uname -r)
sudo apt install libncurses-dev gawk flex bison openssl libssl-dev dkms libelf-dev libudev-dev libpci-dev libiberty-dev autoconf llvm
sudo apt install git

sudo apt update && \
    sudo apt build-dep -y linux linux-image-unsigned-$(uname -r) && \
    sudo apt install -y fakeroot llvm libncurses-dev dwarves

sudo apt install -y libunwind8-dev libdwarf-dev \
  libelf-dev libdw-dev systemtap-sdt-dev \
  libssl-dev libslang2-dev binutils-dev \
  libzstd-dev libbabeltrace-dev libiberty-dev \
  libnuma-dev libcap-dev
sudo apt install linux-tools-common linux-tools-generic
sudo apt install **python**-dev-is-python3
sudo install clang-format clang-tidy clang-tools clang clangd libc++-dev libc++1 libc++abi-dev libc++abi1 libclang-dev liblldb-dev libllvm-ocaml-dev libomp-dev libomp5 lld lldb llvm-dev llvm-runtime llvm python3-clang
sudo apt install rustc rust-src bindgen rustfmt rust-clippy

mkdir -pv hdmi21_dev
cd hdmi21_dev

apt source linux-image-unsigned-$(uname -r)
cd linux-7.0.0
wget 'https://blog.bana.io/ubuntu-build-your-own-kernel/files/hdmi21_dev.patch'
patch -p1 < ./hdmi21_dev.patch

Build The Kernel 

chmod a+x debian/scripts/*
chmod a+x debian/scripts/misc/*
fakeroot debian/rules clean

Modify debian.master/changelog as documented on https://ubuntu.com/kernel/docs/how-to/develop-customise/build-kernel/#modify-abi-number, and also you should use the version of rustc as supplied by your package manager, essentially for now just remove the cargo and rustup directories from PATH:

export RUST_LIB_SRC=/usr/src/rustc-$(rustc --version | cut -d' ' -f2)/library
export do_linux_main_modules_depends=false
fakeroot debian/rules clean
fakeroot debian/rules binary-headers binary-generic binary-perarch
fakeroot debian/rules binary

Install The New Kernel

Last updated on • Mohamed Bana
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