@doogxela Thanks for using the latest release and letting us know about issues.
The initial topic on kernel problem seems weird to me because the installer script uses checksums and would re-download the kernel/init files 10 times in a row if the checksum doesn’t match and error out in the end. So I can’t really see why there could be anything wrong.
On the other hand I see from your post that you are using a custom kernel image (bzImage_5.6.18) and I am wondering if that customization had anything to do with the boot issue??
About the slowness you want to check out this topic: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/14267/upgrade-from-1-5-7-to-1-5-8-issues
Unfortunately we didn’t get enough response and didn’t have enough time to keep up this topic and figure out which part is causing the slowness.