Hello!

I've got Ubuntu 14.04 Desktop ed. w/ kernel ver. 3.16 About a month ago I allowed the system to upgrade the kernel to ver. 4.xx, but after that I couldn't boot my system, so I re-installed everything from Clonezilla image and now I have again 3.16 It's all nice, but everyday I see this annoying upgrade proposal and what's even worse is that I think that I can't install any Ubuntu updates, since I get this kernel upgrade box and when I close it, then there's no update at all. You can take a look at those two print screens I've added.

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Kind of in a bind here.

I might suggest that you try a live media of the latest desktop from Ubuntu and see if you and run it. Basically one big issue is that the security support is out of date. Kind of defeats the point to not update.

You could install the upgraded kernel then choose the older kernel from GRUB when you boot. I would hope that it is only the one kernel version that, for whatever reason, doesn't boot properly on your system and that the next may boot fine.

Explain - in detail.
Do you get a grub screen (do you normally) ?. What messages do you get if you get rid of the splash screen ?.

You can easily put in an exemption so that the package manager can run and install updates, but will NOT install a new kernel.

Alternatively, you could move to a distro that does not stab itself in the leg when updating the kernel. If you truly love Ubuntu, that may not be an option.

And how I can do that?

I have a dual boot system with W10. Also I've been having an issue with booting in general. 'cos usually I end up in BusyBox environment and don't even get to Ubuntu normal login screen. But after a reboot, everything goes back to normal. One explanation could be that my Ubuntu HDD is a USB3 external drive and it's not being called up properly right away. The HDD is kinda sleeping the first time and awakes after the reboot. And I couldn't find a solution that I could implement with my level of knowledge of Linux to solve this problem.
After I installed a new kernel version, that reboot solution stopped working and I simply didn't have Ubuntu, period. Actually, what's interesting is that I could get to a normal Ubuntu login screen, but after trying to login, I had a non-working system, so I had to shut down and turn on again my computer to do anything else.

To the best of my recollection, I tried that before and it didn't get me far. I think I could get to Ubuntu login screen (unlike with kernel 4.4), but then after the logging in, Ubuntu simply stopped working altogether, so my only option was to shut down the PC.

I don't know, but I'm having a feeling that I have t either try to upgrade to 16.04 and to see what might happen to my scripts side by side with PHP7 or just to live without updates for awhile. Possibly I could downgrade PHP7 to PHP5.5 in 16.04 env., but I'm not sure if that's a good idea in general.

You can add rootdelay to the kernel parameters to get around that "warm up" problem.
As for the other issue, I'm betting you do get into Ubuntu ok, but not X (the graphical interface). Boot up the install media (any version) and from a terminal run this and post the output (install inxi in need)

Another idea was to use Synaptic. I usually preferred not to use it and go with a default option.

syg00,
And how I can add rootdelay to the kernel parameters?

Have a read of this - a bit old, but looks ok.
Add (no quotes) "rootdelay=15" - if that doesn't work, up the number (of seconds). Note that just waiting in the grub menu should serve the same purpose - let the external spin up and settle.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

P.S. I downloaded and installed Synaptic, so I can manually update installed packages.

Well there are several ways, but this page lists some of the easy ones: http://askubuntu.com/questions/18654...ecific-package


Took google 3 seconds to find, and it was the first in the results list. You may be able to do better.

In Synaptic, in a left pane I first choose what I want to upgrade, say, "World Wide Web" and then in an upper right pane I choose, say, Firefox. But I also see "Kernel and modules". There I see this:

"linux-generic-lts-utopic" and the verions (installed and latest, which in my case are the same, i.e., 3.16.0.77.68)
And this "linux-headers-generic-lts-utopic" with the same version as above.
So (if I understand it correctly), once a new version arrives, I would see it there and I can upgrade. Therefore I don't understand why should I be using a "Lock version" option at all?