How to determine which kernel version to install?

Question

I've recently installed a fresh copy of Linux Mint 18 on my Lenovo T440p and everything is working great except for one thing: I have trouble when resuming from a "Suspend"- I get no GUI, both of my monitors say 'No Input'. Using Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart the X server seems to fix the problem but of course it kills any running apps I had, which defeats the purpose of me using Suspend in the first place. The default kernel version is 4.4.0-21-generic.

I found this question/answer, but unfortunately Kernel 4.5.2-040502-generic causes worse problems for me- my desktop doesn't work right, things are running more slowly, and dmesg seems to indicate problems (something about a Kernel null dereference- I'm not running the 4.5.2 kernel at the moment so I'm not 100% sure).

So it seems I need a newer version of the Kernel to fix my suspend issue, but I'm not sure how to determine which version I should install. Is this generally a trial by error, or is there someplace that keeps track of the stability of kernel releases?

Answer 1

"Something about a Kernel null dereference" sounds like a bug and should be reported as a bug, but with more details and the complete error message.

If a newer kernel is supposed to fix that (and/or Linux Mint doesn't ship a newer version), you can try a vanilla kernel instead and report back to linux-kernel if it's still not fixed in a current version.

Is this generally a trial by error, or is there someplace that keeps track of the stability of kernel releases?

Yes. With so many different configurations out there, there's no guarantee that one (kernel) version works for all setups. Fortunately your T440p is a pretty common machine and widely used, so I'd expect that a fix could be already available - if it's really a software issue at all.