3rd party drivers & HWE needed with my server?

Linux on Servers
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Hi, Jay and everyone, I bought your book Mastering Ubuntu Server Fourth Edition. It is helping me make our family’s server, so thank you.

I know your book uses Ubuntu Server 22.04 as its starting point and I now am using 22.04.3. This is probably why there are a few differences. The one difference I have a question about is 3rd party drivers. On the screen where you are asked if you want Ubuntu Server (normal) or Ubuntu Server (minimal), there is an extra tick box for installing 3rd party drivers during the installation process.

I wanted to keep things clean so I didn’t have any 3rd party drivers installed. Everything seems to work without them. I don’t need special graphics, as it’s a server (of course).

Is this the better way to go with a server?

I didn’t go with the HWE version either, for the same reason (if it works as is with my current hardware, why go with HWE?). Is that correct?

Thank you, Josh

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I’ll try and give an answer here.

Usually you don’t need extra drivers or HWE kernels on a server - that’s the whole purpose. Server hardware should generally run with the generic Ubuntu kernels and the drivers included.

For my SuperMicro server, I’m running generic Ubuntu kernel 22.04 with no issues at all.

So if everything works for you, just stay with what you got. :sunglasses:

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