Pyserial and Ubuntu Linux kernel 3.13.0-65-generic

[Dave Farrance]

Rob Gaddi <rgaddi at technologyhighland.invalid> wrote:

>So, this is odd.  I'm running Ubuntu 14.04, and my system did a kernel 
>upgrade from the repository from 3.13.0-63-generic to 3.13.0-65-generic.  
>And pyserial (2.7, installed through pip) stopped working.

When KDE's "Plasma 5" appeared with Kubuntu 15.04, I found it to be too
new and have too many dysfunctions, so I reverted to Kubuntu 14.04 LTS.

Now this problem.  Looking at the Ubuntu 14.04 repository, I found that
it contained a backported version of the kernel used in 15.04.  So...

Remove "meta" packages that have latest 3.13 kernel as dependencies:

sudo apt-get purge linux-generic linux-signed-generic

Install meta packages that pull in the latest 3.19 kernel:

sudo apt-get install linux-generic-lts-vivid
  linux-signed-generic-lts-vivid

Serial now works fine. The later kernel introduces no functional changes
in (K)ubuntu 14.04 that I can discern.  I presume that since it is a
"backported" version of the 3.19 kernel, that its video drivers have
been matched to Ubuntu 14.04's version of X.Org, and so on.

Anyway, that's what works for me. I could've put a "hold" on the
3.13.0-63 kernel, but this seems a better fix.