Ubuntu Suggests NOT Upgrading to 21.04. Because they respect you.

Two weeks ago I posted a video about Windows Updates that have harmed user's computers and productivity.

These Windows Updates get pushed, regardless of their negative impact, and Microsoft seems to not care at all--having slashed staffing in their product quality and testing teams.

In yet another example of how Free and Open Source Software is superior and the Linux Way™ makes for a better user experience, let's examine Ubuntu's 21.04 release and how Canonical handled a major problem which reportedly effected 17 people.

First, a little background. Usually, within a few days of a new Ubuntu release, Ubuntu users will see an upgrade prompt notifying them they can update to the latest version. Well, these prompts were notably absent after the most recent release.

Why? Because when a few people upgraded to Ubuntu 21.04 their machines became unbootable.

Now, not all users who upgraded were left with broken installs. Indeed it seemed that early Macbook Air laptops with an old version of UEFI were the symptomatic ones.

On April 19th, 2021, a bug report was added to launchpad.net.

The latest update on Hirsute made the MacBook Air from 2012 unbootable.It could be recovered by booting a 20.04 live CD, downloading 20.04's shim package and overwriting the files in EFI/ubuntu and EFI/BOOT with the files shipped in the shim package.Machines Affected (not comprehensive):
MacBookPro8,2
MacBookAir5,2

Keep in mind, that this was posted April 19th. Ubuntu 21.04 wasn't released until April 22nd. Within the first few hours of the report, other users had confirmed that this was a real bug needing to be addressed and a workaround had been found across multiple flavors of Ubuntu.

During this time, Ubuntu maintainers issued an advisory asking users to not upgrade their machines because there was a slim chance it could result in an unbootable system.

By April 30th, a fix had been tested and issued--yet Ubuntu still hadn't pushed an upgrade notification to ANY of its users.

This bug is confirmed to effect 17 people... and notably, it would only effected Mac products running UEFI version 1.10 firmware... truly a slim percentage of all Ubuntu users... especially when you consider that many of those machines are going to be over a decade old at this point.

But, out of respect for the people who use their computers, Ubuntu has as of the time of this recording still withheld upgrade notifications for ALL users.

So you're telling me it's possible for an operating system vendor to receive critical feedback BEFORE a product goes live, prevent machines from upgrading to the new, buggy update, fix the issue in less than week and THEN push updates once the problem has been totally resolved?

Well, yes.

See, free software lives or dies on its utility. Meanwhile, proprietary software usually relies on marketshare dominance, vendor lock-in, and the continued Stockholm Syndrome that comes with using their software... and they only answer only shareholders.

So the next time your computer gets stuck in a boot loop or has diminished performance after a Windows Update, know that--while Microsoft COULD care--they really don't. And you wouldn't be having these problems if you just used a good operating system.

https://www.techradar.com/news/users-warned-against-upgrading-to-ubuntu-2104

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shim/+bug/1925010