14 DAY TRIAL // A System76 engineer working on Pop!_OS Linux, the company's Ubuntu-based operating system shipping pre-installed on all of their computers, writes about the recently discovered Ubuntu bug affecting some Lenovo laptops.
As you probably are aware, Canonical is currently discouraging users to download the latest Ubuntu release due to an issue that corrupts the BIOS of some Lenovo laptops, as well as other brands like Acer and Toshiba. The bug is related to the intel-spi-* drivers in the Linux 4.13 kernel packages shipping with Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark), and should also affect other Ubuntu 17.10-based distro like Pop!_OS.
While Canonical is still working hard to respin the 64-bit ISO image of Ubuntu 17.10, System76 was quick to resolve that ugly bug in their Pop!_OS Linux operating system and pushed new ISOs, encouraging users to install their GNU/Linux distribution on Lenovo or Acer machines if they have issues installing Ubuntu 17.10.
"We’ve heard some concerns with a recent bug in the Linux 4.13 kernel shipped with Ubuntu 17.10 and Pop!_OS. The bug does not affect System76 machines. Ubuntu moved quickly to patch the issue and we have published new ISOs that resolve this bug when installing Pop!_OS on Lenovo and Acer laptops. So boldly install Pop! with no fear," said the System76 engineer.
System76 wants to offer transparency in the development of Pop!_OS
System76 aims to offer transparency in the development of Pop!_OS Linux, and they now invite more and more members of the community to join their Pop!_Chat communication channel, where the company wants to share the progress of their work in Pop!_OS Linux, while getting real-time feedback from users. This will help them further improve Pop!_OS Linux.
In the meanwhile, they are busy with the development cycle of the next major Pop!_OS Linux release, which will be based on Canonical's upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system. If you want to get started with installing Pop!_OS Linux on your personal computer, visit the distro's homepage to grab the ISO images for either Intel/AMD or Nvidia GPUs.