More good Ubuntu news.
I found a path to get to 22.04 LTS with a 5.19 mainline kernel from 20.04. A vanilla upgrade to 22.04 LTS will result in the same broken kernel issues we're seeing. But it's possible to inject a 5.19 kernel late into the upgrade and this VM will boot nicely.
Once you have 20.04 installed, take a snapshot. Always good to preserve a working VM while you're upgrading.
First, upgrade 20.04.4 to the dev branch of 22.04 LTS (evidently you'll have to wait to 22.04.1 in order to get a fully supported GA update path, but this will work for the time being). Drop into a root shell and execute the following to do this:
apt update
apt dist-upgrade
update-manager -d
You should now see a Software Update window and be offered an update to 22.04 LTS. Accept the upgrade.
The upgrade process will show release notes that warn you that you're on a development branch. That's OK. Accept the upgrade after reading the notes.
The upgrade will start. At times you'll be prompted for keyboard layouts, installation of Firefox from snap package, and what to do with an existing sshd configuration.
You may also see dialogs pop up for Ubuntu system errors. I simply dismissed them as they popped up - you might want to do that ASAP. I found the upgrade would behave funny when I let those error dialogs collect. The next time I performed the upgrade, I dismissed those errors as soon as they happened, and the upgrade went much more smoothly.
You will also get a request to delete obsolete packages. You are free to do so (I did).
The final step in the upgrade is an offer to reboot the system. Don't reboot. Instead, return to the root shell.
At this point, install the 5.19 mainline kernel. I've attached a script which automates the download into the current working directory. Once you get the packages downloaded, install the new kernel with this command:
dpkg -i *.deb
(of course an alternative would be to build the "mainline" utility that @Mikero mentions).
Once the install finishes, reboot your VM.
You should now have a functional 22.04 VM, albeit with a non-standard kernel. Make sure you have installed open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools desktop. The screen can be resized from within the VM and the window size will change, although resizing the window doesn't seem to trigger a resolution change in the VM.
Good luck!
- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
