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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/OEMKernel
Unless you know that you need/want features/fixes not (yet) part of the OEM kernel you should stay with that.
You can go with generic, build your own, or even go for the mainline kernel. But you might find some hardware not supported.
I was going through the wiki and found this line
The OEM kernel is also called the OEM staging kernel, because the delta in OEM kernel should all be merged to the generic kernel in the next Ubuntu release, so it is essentially a staging code base.
Since the latest kernel SHOULD have all the hardware-specific commits of the OEM, right?
My details on how canonical handle their kernels are very limited. I’m no Ubuntu fan, I just manage Ubuntu servers.
You can check the delta here: https://staging.kernel.ubuntu.com/oem-delta/
Is the OEM kernel getting security updates? Then it should be fine.
If you want a specific feature that's available in the newer kernel, then just try it out. You can select the kernel during boot. If it all works, uninstall the OEM kernel and it should default to the generic one.
Edit: If you want to find out whether you're getting security updates, I'd check the changelog. It should be somewhere like /usr/share/doc/linux-image-somethingsomething/changelog.gz. The entries there should have a date. If the last security fix is older than a couple of weeks, that would be concerning.
Are there specific bugs vulnerabilities in your current kernel that you want to avoid? There usually isn't much to gain by upgrading kernels, unless you have unsupported hardware or a kernel vulnerability. And if your lucky, the OEM kernel should have bug fixes backported to it anyway.
If you have the generic kernels installed, you should be able to boot them from GRUB/bootloader, try it and see if it all still works?
You should, you're missing out on a lot of fixes, performance improvements (and energy improvement) and filesystem improvements.
Don't listen to who says "it's only security stuff". Better hardware support, everyone?
Upgrade and if you have a problem you can always go back to an older one.
I have switched to it (but temporarily). So far, no issues but I'm keeping the OEM kernel just in case.
Hold shift and spacebar on boot (idk which one) and pick a different kernel.