With 20.04 LTS, we will be completing the transition to the live server installer and discontinuing the classic server installer based on debian-installer (d-i), allowing us to focus our engineering efforts on a single codebase. The next-generation subiquity server installer brings the comfortable live session and speedy install of Ubuntu Desktop to server users.

If you have use cases for which you rely on d-i and that are not addressed by subiquity today, please let us know, by early January, what those are so we can incorporate that feedback into our plans for the 20.04 LTS development cycle.

The set of features we have committed to complete for 20.04 LTS in April are:

Implement the autoinstall specification as previously discussed

Guided resilient install option

Enable SSH into an installer session

Support vtoc partition tables as used by DASD disks on s390x

We will announce new versions of subiquity to discourse as they land in the stable channel.

If you are an Ubuntu Server user and you have not tried the live server installer lately, check it out! You can get the latest version by trying the daily Focal Fossa version or by downloading a released version and updating to the latest version of the installer when asked.

Features that have landed since the initial 18.04 LTS release include:

Advanced storage support with RAID and LVM, including encrypted LVM

Support for offline installs

Configuration of network bonds and VLANs

Support for arm64, ppc64el, and s390x architectures

Reuse of existing partitions, retaining their data

Switch to a shell for debugging purposes

The ability for the installer to self-update (to get fixes since the media was created)

Installation of latest updates during the install

Netboot support

Integrated error reporting

We have identified certain features of d-i that we have concluded are not requirements to implement in the live server installer prior to obsoleting d-i-based installation: