[SOLVED] XPS 13 upgrade from 18.04 to 20.04, to 20.10
 

I ran into several issues upgrading from 18.04, to 20.04, then to 20.10.
1) would not boot
In the end I used grub interface to boot single user. The networking was not working.
I found that /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gio/modules/libgiognutls.so was linking to my custom built libgnutls.so that was in /opt/local/lib. But that libgnutls.so was linked to libnettle that was removed in the upgrade. I removed /opt/local/lib reference in /etc/ld.so.conf.d/. Now I could boot to runlevel 3 with networking working.

2) no graphics
I changed the kernel boot and removed "quiet splash" with "nomodeset".

3) still no graphics (i.e., no runlevel 5)
I checked syslog and found the following:
Dec 14 06:35:10 halibut nautilus[37980]: Could not load a pixbuf from /org/gtk/libgtk/icons/16x16/status/image-missing.png.#012This may indicate that pixbuf loaders or the mime database could not be found.
Dec 14 06:35:10 halibut org.gnome.Nautilus[37980]: Bail out! Gtk:ERROR:../../../../gtk/gtkiconhelper.c:494:ensure_surface_for_gicon: assertion failed (error == NULL): Failed to load /org/gtk/libgtk/icons/16x16/status/image-missing.png: Unrecognized image file format (gdk-pixbuf-error-quark, 3)

Based on that I did "apt reinstall" shared-mime-info and gdk-pixbuf2.

4) runlevel 5 working with gnome desktop. Yay, but still using nomodeset

Based on web search found that I need to do this:
# apt install intel-media-va-driver-non-free

I seem to be off and running. (I did rebuild my own libgnutls.so and re-enabled /opt/local/lib in /etc/ld.so.conf.d.)