These packages allow you to have multiple versions of the hardened kernel installed simultaneously. The intended use is to install the linux-hardened-versioned-bin (and linux-hardened-versioned-headers-bin if you use out-of-tree drivers) metapackage, using an AUR helper or otherwise in a way that automatically processes dependencies. This metapackage depends on the latest hardened versioned kernel package, but older kernel packages will remain on your system as orphaned packages to be removed later. You can find and remove them with the remove-orphaned-kernels script, which will uninstall orphaned kernel packages except those corresponding to the kernel that is currently running. If you use GRUB, you will also need to ensure its config is updated after kernels are added or removed. Installing the grub-hook package will ensure this is done automatically.

To switch from the regular hardened kernel package to these versioned packages, you can do the following (using the AUR helper yay for example):

# Remove linux-hardened, linux-hardened-headers if installed:
$ pacman -Rs linux-hardened [linux-hardened-headers]
# If using GRUB, install grub-hook before installing kernels:
$ yay -S grub-hook
# Install the kernel metapackage, and headers metapackage if you use out-of-tree drivers:
$ yay -S linux-hardened-versioned-bin [linux-hardened-versioned-headers-bin]

This is also discussed here.

See also:

• linux-versioned-bin

• linux-lts-versioned-bin

• linux-zen-versioned-bin