Hello guys.
For regular use, you should definitely use regular Ubuntu images.
Minimal images don’t come with support for virtual consoles, that’s why you’ll never see anything on VNC after GRUB loads the kernel. Because of that, any boot problems are hard to debug. Also, the change in Ubuntu kernels mentioned above introduces different behaviour in handling of virtual consoles - basically, failing if configured console is not available, while the distributed kernel simply ignores it. That’s why it doesn’t boot completely, it’s stuck on opening missing virtual console.
To fix such problems, it’s good to check the GRUB configuration of particular boot entry and update kernel parameters accordingly. In this case, dropping the console=tty1 would fix the problem.
We’ll evalute a solution for the Marketplace image when doing a mass refresh of the images.
Best,
Vlastimil