Ubuntu 20.04 which version is the best?

VIM3
1

Hi guys,

I want to ask about the best way to upgrade to ubuntu 20.04 from 18.04 (probably V191231 or even earlier) without losing data.

I did apt full upgrade and fenix upgrade but it doesn’t seem to work.

Also are there any caveats on ubuntu 20.04? Like no wifi / bluetooth, PCIe?

Thanks

2

@Eurus there is no specific way to do it, as most of your packages in 18.04 will be incompatible or even inexistant in 20.04, everything works fine, the only way I can think of is to manually backup all the files to a seperate disk, update, then put everything back in the intended place :slightly_frowning_face:

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Well, that’s too bad. I hate to have to reconfigure services like DHCP and samba…
Anyway thanks

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Is there any functional difference between the mainline version and 4.9 version?

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mostly just the BSP things like NPU, openCL, dtb overlays I think

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Looks like 4.9 has more feature than mainline kernel, I think I’ll stay on 4.9

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Mainline gives you PCIe boot (coming soon), external device boot order (SD cards, USB drives are tested first to boot), GPU acceleration, and much more kernel optimizations :wink:

it depends on your use case, are you using it as a dedicated home server or a lightweight desktop ?

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I use it as a control box for my astrophotography gears, and I also do some QT programming on it, so a lightweight desktop is the case.

I currently have kernel 4.9 ubuntu mate 18.04 installed on my emmc, I tested several 20.04 SD card images yesterday and I’m a bit more confused:

  1. Burned VIM3_Ubuntu-gnome-focal_Linux-5.12_arm64_SD-USB_V1.0.5-210430.img to a SD card and it booted into the system but my 2.4g mouse and keyboard doesn’t work (tried 2 sets of keyboards) so I stuck at the login screen
  2. Burned VIM3_Ubuntu-gnome-focal_Linux-4.9_arm64_SD-USB_V1.0.5-210430.img to a SD card, booted fine, mouse and keyboard worked fine. But it can’t access the EMMC storage.

So several more questions…

  1. Don’t know why but SD card takes precedence at booting, I thought you said only mainline can do it? Is this something related to uboot? (thought I kinda like this behavior as I can have a backup system in case I messed up the emmc os)
  2. I remember back in 2020, mainline was 5.7 and it had a few issues with wifi and bluetooth, is this still the case that caused my keyboard not working?
  3. Is it normal that I can’t access EMMC when running on a SD card OS?
  4. I don’t think gnome desktop is the best choice… Opening the application launchpad takes almost half of the CPU power, and the animation doesn’t look smooth.
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that is weird behavior indeed,
I’m currently doing testing on Mainline 5.12 v210520, everything works from sound to the wifi, keyboard and mouse. I suggest using XFCE, its much more lightweight

I’d suggest doing a backup from the eMMC and trying out Mainline server v210520 and then installing Xfce on top of it, mainline has a lot of room for optimization like extensive overclocking (I’m currently working on it) and GPU optimizations (ask @clort76 for more info on setting up Wayfire ) these can make the system even more responsive and faster,

so I’d suggest you to do some testing by yourself before you select an optimal setup for your use case,
please test whatever is optimal and take notes, helps you and others :wink:

best of luck!

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