How to install Ubuntu Desktop on Raspberry Pi 4

Changing the pi to boot from SSD does not work as stated if the USB adapter is not recognised by the installer. To get this to work I used an SD card and completed the install fully as specified and changed the boot order on the PI.
I then removed the SD card and put it into another Linux computer with the USB SSD plugged. The SSD partitions need to be re-sized (using gparted) to match the SDcard and then the dd commaned used ( “dd if=sdcard-partition of=ssd-partition”) to copy both the boot partition and the “writeable” partition to the SSD. Once copied the “writeable” partition on the SSD can then be expanded to the size of the SSD.
If the USB SATA adapter for the SSD is not recognised by the boot loader, the SSD will fail to be read correctly and you will get block errors. If this is the case, the boot partition of the SSD needs to be mounted on a different Linux computer and the cmdline.txt file edited to use usb-storage.quirks. There is an excellent article on this here: https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ssd-flash-drives/

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