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At this mirror of releases.ubuntu.com, there are two sections for "Desktop Image" that are very similar:

A. Upper "Desktop image" Section

The desktop image allows you to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all, and at your option to install it permanently later. This type of image is what most people will want to use. You will need at least 384MiB of RAM to install from this image.

PC (Intel x86) desktop image For almost all PCs. This includes most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors and almost all computers that run Microsoft Windows, as well as newer Apple Macintosh systems based on Intel processors. Choose this if you are at all unsure.

64-bit PC (AMD64) desktop image Choose this to take full advantage of computers based on the AMD64 or EM64T architecture (e.g., Athlon64, Opteron, EM64T Xeon, Core 2). If you have a non-64-bit processor made by AMD, or if you need full support for 32-bit code, use the Intel x86 images instead.

B. Lower "Desktop image" Section

The desktop image allows you to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all, and at your option to install it permanently later. You will need at least 384MiB of RAM to install from this image.

PC (Intel x86) desktop image For almost all PCs. This includes most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors and almost all computers that run Microsoft Windows, as well as newer Apple Macintosh systems based on Intel processors. Choose this if you are at all unsure.

64-bit PC (AMD64) desktop image Choose this to take full advantage of computers based on the AMD64 or EM64T architecture (e.g., Athlon64, Opteron, EM64T Xeon, Core 2). If you have a non-64-bit processor made by AMD, or if you need full support for 32-bit code, use the Intel x86 images instead.

What's the difference between the two?
Note from Thomas Ward: This has been fixed and the 'second section' has been removed. A screenshot of the original issue continues to exist here with the big black lines next to the sections being referred to here

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  • The links point to two different architectures: the top one to i386, the bottom x86_64.
    – jasonwryan
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 2:19
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    @jasonwryan. No. You misread the information. The two types of Desktop Image are both for x86 and x86_64.
    – xmllmx
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 2:47
  • No - top: ubuntu-releases.wallawalla.edu/14.04/ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-i386.iso and bottom: ubuntu-releases.wallawalla.edu/14.04/ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso The second lot of desktop links are to the original 14.04 release.
    – jasonwryan
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 2:50
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    @jasonwryan. You must miss some information. There are TWO sections named "Desktop Image", but I can't find anything different between them, which makes me confused. You may review the edited post again.
    – xmllmx
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 2:59
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    @jasonwryan, Thank you for your explanation. You are right. I'm wrong.
    – xmllmx
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 3:30

1 Answer 1

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NOTE: This issue has been resolved, now, for historical purposes, this screenshot shows the initial issue that was going on.

If we dissect the links in each section, we can find that the two sections are similar, but point to different ISOs on the same server.
(The mirror you're looking at mirrors the master releases page as well, but for clarity, you should edit your question to make note that the 'link' to the download page you have is to a mirror, not the master cdimage server)

The first upper "Desktop Image" section has links to the 14.04.2 LTS ISOs, which are really just respins of the ISOs with updated kernels, updated packages, newer Hardware Enablement Stacks, etc. You should be using the images in this section, instead of the other section.

The second lower "Desktop Image" section has the original 14.04 LTS ISOs. It has the original kernel, original packages, original hardware enablement stack, etc. from the first 14.04 ISO.

That's the only difference on that page (but it could be displayed better).

I found out from one of the mirrors vanguards that this is by-design, however it could be improved and I had filed a ticket on Ubuntu's RT (tickets) tracker to get this made known and recommend the addition of headers for those sections to detail the individual variants, to add clarity.

The Ubuntu Mirrors team (thanks, Paul Gear for handling the ticket) has removed the second section which pointed to the 14.04 original ISOs, and they have left the 14.04.2 section there. This is now handled, and all the mirrors should now have this change.

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