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Canonical has re-released the Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS desktop images today due to an installation bug that could render OEM installations unbootable.
A couple of days ago, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution informed users on Twitter that the ISO images of the Desktop flavor of its recently released Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (Focal Fossa) are affected by a bug causing OEM installations via the Ubiquity installer to fail to boot due to missing kernel.
As a reminder, Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS comes with updated kernel and graphics stacks backported from the more recent Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) operating system series. As such, this Focal Fossa point release is powered by the Linux 5.8 kernel and Mesa 20.3 graphics stack.
According to the Launchpad entry of this bug, only certain machines were affected and it happened when networking was enabled, which means that if you did an offline installation everything worked fine.
“Shortly after the release of Ubuntu 20.04.2, on Thursday February 4 2021, a regression was discovered which means that on certain systems and under certain specific conditions the Ubuntu installer can fail to install a Linux kernel. This renders the system unable to boot,” said Canonical.
This is another example why Canonical needs to revamp its Ubiquity installer on Ubuntu Desktop images.
Since Canonical is such a big company, it cannot take any chances to leave a buggy major release in the wild, so today they’ve re-spun the ISO images for Ubuntu Desktop and any official flavor using the Ubiquity installer, including Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Studio, and Ubuntu Kylin.
Lubuntu isn’t affected by this issues as it uses the Calamares universal installer framework for Linux.
Without any further ado, you can download the new ISO images, tagged with version 20.04.2.0, using the direct download links below if you plan on reinstalling or installing Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (or any of the other flavors) on a new computer. Existing users aren’t affected by this issue.
Last updated 3 years ago
