Ubuntu LTS releases used to pick up the newer MESA and kernel whenever the next regular release came out. Apparently they’re switching things up now — you can install the Rolling LTS Enablement Stack to get the kernel from the latest stable Ubuntu release. So basically, if you’re on 16.04 with the default 4.4 kernel, this gets you up to a supported 4.8 kernel. There’s an official schedule:

This method is outdated. There’s a newer, officially supported way—click here to see it /archives/5013/ Yakkety (16.10) has been out for a while, but the official Ubuntu 16.04 repos still haven’t picked this thing up. So I had to install it myself. Great.

A while back I upgraded to kernel 4.2 because of a wireless issue. That got fixed, but then 4.2 brought new problems of its own. First was the speaker popping on boot that’s specific to ThinkPad users. It showed up in early 4.2 kernels and was later patched. Which is useless to me now, since we’re on 4.3 anyway. So I bumped the kernel to 4.3 via Ubuntu’s Mainline PPA, and after that VMware started telling me it couldn’t find GCC 5.2. Side note: VMware China ran a 80% off promo for Singles’ Day, so I finally bought a legit license. And now you’re telling me it doesn’t work? Not acceptable.