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from the things-that-make-your-laptop-go-BOOM dept.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/21/ubuntu_lenovo_bios/
Updated Canonical has halted downloads of Ubuntu Linux 17.10, aka Artful Aardvark, from its website after punters complained installing the open-source OS on laptops knackered the machines.
Specifically, the desktop flavor of Artful Aardvark, released in October, has been temporarily pulled – the server builds and other editions remain available. A corrected version of 17.10 for desktops is due to be released soon.
"The download of Ubuntu 17.10 is currently discouraged due to an issue on certain Lenovo laptops," the Linux distro maker noted this week on its desktop download page. "Once fixed this download will be enabled again."
Installing 17.10 on Lenovo Yoga and IdeaPad laptops prevents the motherboard's BIOS from saving its settings, and while the computer will hopefully continue to start up, it potentially stops the machine from booting via USB.
The cockup mainly affects Lenovo computers, although other systems may also fall foul: selected Acer, HP, Toshiba and Dell hardware are said to be hit, too.
A fault report on Canonical's bug tracker tells it all – apparently, Artful Aardvark's Linux kernel includes an Intel SPI driver that was not ready for release
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 26 2017, @07:34PM
On the other hand, this isn't the first time Ubuntu knowingly shipped broken software.
Last time I tried to install Ubuntu (one or two years ago) I got hit with the same thing -- was reading reviews for over a month indicating the installer was broken, figured I'd try it anyway because those were mostly pre-release reviews and I assumed they would have fixed it before they officially released, but they did not. You'd get to hard drive partitioning and the installer would lock up, every single time. I ended up with Fedora, which has worked flawlessly ever since. Ubuntu will apparently throw any broken bullshit out the door if that's what it takes to hit their totally arbitrary release date.
And that was my first time trying to install Ubuntu after many years -- I swore them off after wasting hours trying to get it working after they shipped a broken version of ndiswrapper maybe ten years ago.
As far as I can tell, Ubuntu has never once shipped a fully functional release...I'm sure there's probably a couple in there somewhere, but I sure haven't found them...