What's the difference between ubuntu's amd64-disk-kvm.img and the regular amd64.img cloud images?

On there is (among many others) both a groovy-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk-kvm.img and a groovy-server-cloudimg-amd64.img. What's the difference?

1 Answer

You can look at the .manifest files available on the same page. You will see that the difference is the kernel being used. The disk-kvm.img variant has linux-image-kvm 5.8.0.1018.20 while the other image has linux-image-5.8.0-43-generic.

The former is a reduced kernel for use in virtual environments, it might miss some modules/configs but is a bit lighter.

The second is the generic kernel that works everywhere. You'd use those images e.g. to deploy a new bare-metal system with them or in any other place where the linux-kvm represents a limitation you do not want.

If in doubt and you only have to select only one, then the non-kvm image is the one that should work everywhere.

Here you can read more about Ubuntu kernel variants