Share with us your Focal installation/Upgrade Experience

[mortalkorona]

Please tell us which tool you used to make the live drive, when you had the problem 'gfxboot.c32: not a COM32R image'. It looks like an old problem, that affected some extracting tools (it was squashed in the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator version bundled with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS). Has it popped up again in Unetbootin? or some other tool?

@sudodus

I followed this tutorial when creating my LiveCD/USB stick with Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator using an old Lubuntu install based on Ubuntu 14.something LTS I think.
https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/tutoria...ntu#1-overview

• My Windows gaming machine couldn't detect my USB stick which I previously had tried and failed to install Qubes OS with (recommended by Edward Snowden). Which also meant that my Ubuntu guest VMs on VirtualBox couldn't detect and write to that USB stick.
  .
• Also I didn't want to risk my Windows gaming machine messing with partitions.
  .

The only working machine I had at home at that time which could detect and repair that Qubes OS LiveCD/USB stick was with my old trusty Lubuntu.

How to Repair a Corrupted USB drive in Linux
https://www.maketecheasier.com/repai...b-drive-linux/

[DuckHook]

It's been a mixed bag.

As expected, the virgin installs gave me the least problems, though they were not entirely trouble-free either. Servers, whether upgrades or new installs, went without any hitches; desktops were a different story:

1. My older AMD GPU will only run the Radeon driver. Noticeably more lag and choppy graphics than with Bionic. Surprising and disappointing.
2. Irritating defaults like pulseaudio ignoring last setting and always defaulting to USB,
3. Bug in Totem or associated library makes videos so choppy as to be unplayable. Using VLC as workaround. It works nicely.
4. 4K video no longer 60Hz. Only 30Hz offered by default. No doubt these are limitations unique to my GPU/Monitor/cabling/EDID config, but still disappointing given that I could run 60Hz in Bionic. Partially worked around by creating custom ~/.xprofile but this causes periodic screen tearing and shifting (no such problems in Bionic).
5. Both pluses and minuses in app changes: GIMP is finally a coordinated app instead of silly separate windows, LibreOffice has bugs, GnuCash has changed its default config location, Rhythmbox has nerfed UI that does not allow importing tracks, etc.
6. Focal notably boots faster than Bionic
7. Allows ZFS root installs natively which is pretty cool.

The upgrades were more problematic. Unfortunately, a lot more. To set the stage, prior to upgrading, I tried to back out as many customizations as I could remember. The system was as close to a default state as 2+ years of power usage would allow.

1. Pulseaudio problems. All output redirected to one audio sink. Finally solved by nuking ~/.config/pulse and rebuilding one from scratch.
2. KVM problems. All inherited VMs hung at shutdown necessitating being killed, then destroyed. Finally solved by purging and reinstalling the whole virt-manager stack. This then broke custom seabios resolutions.
3. Some VMs have migrated well, others not so well.
4. Scanner and printing either acted oddly or stopped working altogether. Solved by purging old printers and reinstalling from scratch.
5. Some apps came out well, others, not so well, still others, very poorly. Wonky post-upgrade behaviour from a number of apps including LibreOffice, Signal, Rhythmbox.
6. LXD containers migrated nicely, which is pleasantly surprising. Was expecting more problems.

Altogether, neither more nor less problematic than past upgrades. The first point release should fix many of the worst bugs; fewer of the non-critical but still irritating ones.

[roboticforest]

Greetings all,

My experience so far has been mixed. Currently I'm extremely frustrated and lost. I can't find any answers online to any of the problems I've been having. Google, DuckDuckGo, and StackExchange aren't giving any helpful results. So, with that said, here's my general experience so far:

Like I did with 12.04 and 16.04 I ran 20.04 off of a flash drive for some days. Everything was working fantastically. I'm not perfectly happy with the new GUI, but that's not a deal breaker. Running LibreOffice, Firefox, installing Chrome, and a bunch of other software I normally use, all went really well. Generally, I was happy with 20.04 and figured that I would figure out ways to tweak the GUI after it was installed. First though, I wanted to try out my new printer and get it working in the sandbox that is a live CD.

However, the only thing I *couldn't* do on the live CD was get my printer working. I've needed a printer for a long time and was finally able to buy one, so I bought a printer that was evaluated as working out of the box for Ubuntu 20.04, but while I could do simple prints with only the generic defaults on the live CD I couldn't scan. I never got it fully working, There were MANY problems getting the printer drivers installed (literal days of internet searches and frustration), and finally an important part of the installation requires a reboot (which I can't do on a live CD), so I had to wait until Ubuntu was properly installed to try again.

The installation process of Ubuntu itself went fine. No errors or hiccups. It actually installed much faster than I remember 16.04 installing, and the boot up process is so dang fast that if my HDD weren't encrypted I could blink and miss it!

Ubuntu itself hasn't been stable though... and I can't find fixes to any of the problems I'm having. I can't get the printer drivers installed at all. My entire computer keeps locking up and needing to be hard booted. I can't kill frozen processes! If my wifi cuts out (and it is daily and intermittent) then everything dies with it. I even lost my GUI for a few days and I have no idea why it broke, or why it eventually came back.

I need help fixing this. I *need* this computer stable again. Where can/should I post more details about the issues I'm having? I saw that there is a General Help sub-forum here. Is that the best place for me to go, or is there somewhere else that is more appropriate to the kinds of troubles I've mentioned? Sorry, but this is my first post on this website and I don't know my way around it yet.

[sudodus]

...

I need help fixing this. I *need* this computer stable again. Where can/should I post more details about the issues I'm having? I saw that there is a General Help sub-forum here. Is that the best place for me to go, or is there somewhere else that is more appropriate to the kinds of troubles I've mentioned? Sorry, but this is my first post on this website and I don't know my way around it yet.

(Until somebody suggests something better) I agree that it is a good idea to

- start a thread in the General Help sub-forum.

- An alternative might be the Hardware sub forum (due to the issues with the printer).

-o-

- You can also ask a question at AskUbuntu. Please be aware that AskUbuntu is focused on single questions and straight answers. The Ubuntu Forums are more open to discussion of various aspects of a problem or feature.

[ActionParsnip]

DigitalOcean image. Works great. No problems whatsoever

[roboticforest]

(Until somebody suggests something better) I agree that it is a good idea to

- start a thread in the General Help sub-forum.

- An alternative might be the Hardware sub forum (due to the issues with the printer).

-o-

- You can also ask a question at AskUbuntu. Please be aware that AskUbuntu is focused on single questions and straight answers. The Ubuntu Forums are more open to discussion of various aspects of a problem or feature.

Thank you. I'll probably try the hardware forum then.

I've already made a post on AskUbuntu about my wifi card, and I have a friend trying to help me out as well. I'm not sure what we can really do about it if it's a driver problem though, but we're looking around.

[Frantic_Earthling]

I have an Asus laptop G750JZ with the following specs:

i7 Intel® Core™ i7-4710HQ CPU @ 2.50GHz × 8
RAM 16 Gb
GeForce GTX 880M/PCIe/SSE2
HD 1 Tb
SSD 250 Gb

I have been running a dual-boot system with Win10 Pro and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

I have just made a fresh install of 20.04 LTS, erasing (on purpose) my old 18.04 install.

I did not choose the “something else” option, as I was presented right from the start with the option to install over the old version.

The install went flawlessly.

My dual boot works fine.

To top it all, my Brother printer MFC-J4625DW was automatically recognized. I only had to install the scanner part manually but was still impressed by the automatic recognition of the printer.

Many thanks to the folks at Canonical!

[yetimon_64]

I still haven't done a Focal install for myself yet, but my first 2 installs of Xubuntu Focal for another person have gone very well.

No dual booting involved just single Xubuntu Focal installs on 2 old laptops, an Asus laptop circa 2008 and a Lenovo laptop circa 2012. Everything is working very well on these older laptops. The Asus is only a 2 GB RAM machine and is a bit slow, but still usable, with Xubuntu (Lubuntu would have been a better choice but the user is new to any Linux installations so I decided on one release/flavor for both machines); the Lenovo with 4 GB of RAM is very smooth and fast with Xubuntu on it.

[exploder]

Clean install on an older HP desktop and about a six month old HP laptop. The desktop machine had no problems, the laptop had issues with the kernel relating to the onboard sound. Installing the mainline kernel 5.8.1 solved the problem but there are some harmless kernel errors on boot. The next point release should fix it right up and the laptop is perfectly usable now. I expected problems with a laptop that new.

[maestrobwh1]

Upgraded to kernel 5.7.1 using mainline.

Thinkpad 11E with Intel core M-5Y10C, and Windows 10 was snappier on this machine than either Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Linux Lite using 5.4.

Now with 5.7.1, boot time is cut in half an overall desktop experience is significantly better.