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Since upgrading my laptop from Lubuntu 18.4 to 20.4 I am experiencing issues during booting. The laptop almost never boots successfully on the first attempt anymore, and it takes a seemingly random amount of attempts before it does boot correctly. In general, it is tough for me to find a clear structure in the booting behaviour; it seems erratic other than that it never works on the first try.

Usually, when trying to boot I will get a slightly backlit black screen on the first attempt. Subsequent attempts often give a black screen with a blinking underscore. When presented with a menu similar to what is shown in the second picture here Ubuntu 20.04 doesnt start since apt upgrade, the boot is often successful, regardless of which kernel I pick, but not always. When choosing to boot in safe mode from this menu it does always work without exception from what I can tell.

When disconnecting the laptop from the external monitors I use it seems to take far more attempts to boot, and usually, I have to resort to booting in safe mode, then resetting the laptop, and then it will (often) work for whatever reason.

In my BIOS, I currently have Legacy booting available. When set to "UEFI only", it becomes impossible to boot. I have tried using solutions from other threads, such as the one here: Ubuntu 20.04 black screen after installing, no booting, but they don't seem to work in my case.

The laptop I'm using is a 2016 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 carbon. I have no dual boot, Lubuntu is the only operating system installed.

Tejas Lotlikar
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W. Verbeke
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    You mention upgrading.. How did you upgrade? as all release notes from 18.10 report "Note, due to the extensive changes required for the shift in desktop environments, the Lubuntu team does not support upgrading from 18.04 or below to any greater release. Doing so will result in a broken system. If you are on 18.04 or below and would like to upgrade, please do a fresh install." (https://lubuntu.me/focal-1-released/) as LXDE crud gets left behind that gets in the way. It shouldn't impact booting, but impacts will depend on packages/changes you made to your system. – guiverc Dec 23 '20 at 21:46
  • Thanks for checking this. Maybe this release not is only relevant when upgrading from 18.04 to 18.10? Often when the package manager ran updates it presented with the question whether I would like to upgrade to Lubuntu 20.4. At some point I decided to do it, but since the question was prompted it seems like it was clearly an intended feature to upgrade. – W. Verbeke Dec 23 '20 at 22:53
  • Maybe it is also worth noting that I am experiencing no other issues I'm aware of with my system after the upgrade once I finally get it to boot. – W. Verbeke Dec 23 '20 at 22:56
  • The issue in my first comment applies to any LXDE release (18.04 or before) upgraded to a LXQt system (ie. 18.10 or later) if not performed via re-install. The quote I gave was from 20.04.1 release notes so that text applied to 18.04 -> 20.04 upgrade specifically. Lubuntu 18.04 LTS was the end of the line with LXDE upgrades as LXDE is unsupported post-18.04 by Lubuntu (just as 20.04 is the end of the line for Ubuntu Studio users as it's the last using XFCE, re-install is needed for later releases using the reduced KDE later releases of Ubuntu Studio use). – guiverc Dec 23 '20 at 23:02
  • You were warned of a broken system (https://lubuntu.me/focal-1-released/) that is now unsupported by Lubuntu. Yes I can tell you it's fixable (my own system was upgraded), but it'll take time, and the breaks will depend somewhat on your changes made, plus packages added post-install, ie. it's specific to your box. The breakage was reduced to (and crud left behind) which complicates things into the future (most of it isn't used.. it's LXDE) but can lead you on endless wild-goose chases as it looks correct, but shouldn't be used (it maybe used depending on your changes.. leading to issues) – guiverc Dec 23 '20 at 23:08
  • Aha ok. Strange they present the option to upgrade so prominently then. Unfortunately reinstalling is not an option at the moment because I have important deadlines coming up in the next two months, and I would prefer not to reinstall my system from scratch. Any ideas where I might look for fixing this booting issue I have? – W. Verbeke Dec 23 '20 at 23:10
  • Lubuntu didn't offer the upgrade, the team did everything possible to warn users not to upgrade (release notes, blogs, emails on mailing lists) but the Ubuntu base see's the chance to upgrade the base-Ubuntu system and that was upgraded, along with the the Lubuntu desktop that should not have been upgraded as per instructions/release-notes; it being part of your system. Always read release notes & the caveats on accepting the offers (of upgrade or other item... the release notes provide the warnings & expected problems..) – guiverc Dec 23 '20 at 23:15
  • I will definitely be careful next time. Any ideas about the booting in particular? This is the pressing issue I want to get solved now. – W. Verbeke Dec 23 '20 at 23:19
  • You can wait & hope for help here by non-Lubuntu team members.. Lubuntu will suggest you re-install (use Manual Partitioning, select existing partition(s) and ensure you don't format your partitions), where it notes your packages, erases system directories, installs, tries to add-back additional packages if available on new release, asks to reboot - without touching user files unless you selected format). Of course backup first (mistakes are easily made), but that's the only on-topic Lubuntu help available. – guiverc Dec 23 '20 at 23:19
  • Ok thank you for the advice. – W. Verbeke Dec 23 '20 at 23:21

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