OK so after I've connected successfully and ran the upgrade for kernel, what do you know, the OS booted :))
Anyway, managed to log it and here's a diff of boot from before and after the upgrade
https://www.diffchecker.com/ER6op67Q/
What I can tell is that some addresses for memory I think, seem to have changed
Anyway, thanks a lot guys for helping and eventually fixing the issue, even if I don't know what changed
Hopefully will continue to work fine for the foreseeable future