Ubuntu’s Great Mainline Kernel PPA Hasn’t Been Working Since Mid-September

One of the very convenient features for Ubuntu Linux users who want to run the very newest upstream kernel releases or simply test a new kernel build for verifying bug fixes or functionality has been the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA. It’s been around for years, backed by Canonical, and very convenient for fetching pre-built AArch64 / ARM / POWER / RISC-V / x86_64 kernel binaries as Debian packages… With options of stable/test kernel versions as well as daily packages. Sadly, it’s been broken once again and has been in that manner since mid-September.

The Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA is great for quickly and easily fetching new upstream Linux kernel builds assembled for Ubuntu/Debian systems. It’s a big time saver for grabbing the latest stable or daily development kernel on Ubuntu. It’s also great for having them publicly and readily available — one of the reasons I prefer it as well is for that transparency into the kernel builds and prefer using them so when a vendor or user asks about my kernel configuration or if I can supply the kernel used for testing, it’s darn simple to just cite the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA.

But it hasn’t been producing any new kernel builds since the middle of September… All of the Linux 6.12 release candidates and daily builds have not been producing. Presumably due to a broken Kconfig change or something else failing from the Linux 6.12 merge window changes.

Similar to last year the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA being broken for over a month. Frustrating that such a useful feature and one maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team can remain broken for weeks on end. It’s been an annoyance on my end for a number of weeks, but at least last time when calling out the broken state for more than a month, it wound up being fixed shortly thereafter. Hopefully that happens again to restore this great feature of Ubuntu Linux particularly for hardware enthusiasts, kernel testers, etc.

For those that haven’t used these mainline kernel builds before on Ubuntu, their home is at kernel.ubuntu.com/mainline/.