Raspberry Pi SD image – Ubuntu MATE (Linux OS)

Informatie (ENG):

Martin Wimpress and Rohith Madhavan have made an Ubuntu MATE image for the Raspberry Pi 2 which you can download or build yourself.

The image is functional and based on the regular Ubuntu armhf base, not the new Snappy Core, which means that the installation procedure for applications is the same as that for the regular desktop version, ie using apt-get.

We have done what we can to optimise the build for the Raspberry Pi 2 and one can comfortably use applications such as LibreOffice, which in fact is a joy to use :-) But the microSDHC I/O throughput is a bottleneck so we recommend that you use a Class 6 or Class 10 microSDHC card. If you build the image yourself we recommend you use the f2fsfilesystem.

You’ll need a microSD card which is 4GB or greater to fit the image. The file system can be resized to occupy the unallocated space of the microSD card, similar to Raspbian.

NOTE! There are no predefined user accounts. The first time you boot the Ubuntu MATE image it will run through a setup wizard where you can create your own user account and configure your regional settings. The first boot is quite slow, but once the first boot configuration is complete subsequent boots are much quicker.

Putting the image on microSDHC

Download the image and then:

1. Extract the .img.bz2 archive to get the image file. bunzip2 ubuntu-mate-15.10-desktop-armhf-raspberry-pi-2.img.bz2
2. Write the image file to the microSD card as root. sudo ddrescue -d -D --force ubuntu-mate-15.10-desktop-armhf-raspberry-pi-2.img /dev/sdX

The drive may be mounted on any /dev/sdX so use the command lsblk to check.

Re-size file system

There are no utilities included for automatic file system re-sizing. However, it’s not hard to do manually. Once booted:

Delete the second partition (d, 2), then re-create it using the defaults (n, p, 2, enter, enter), then write and exit (w). Reboot the system, then:

Enable and Disable X11

We created a simple utility called graphical to disable/enable the MATE desktop environment for easily creating a headless “server”. Executing graphical disable will present a console login on the next boot, with now X11 or associated services running. If you want to get the full Ubuntu MATE desktop back, run graphical enable and reboot.

Hardware accelerated video

Most videos will play with hardware acceleration using omxplayer which is pre-installed in Ubuntu MATE. However if you have MPEG-2 or VC-1 video video files then you will need MPEG-2 and/or VC-1 licenses from the Raspberry Pi Store.

Redirecting audio output

You can select which audio device omxplayer should output audio to.

For HDMI

For 3.5mm audio jack

The sound will output to HDMI by default if both HDMI and the 3.5mm audio jack are connected. You can, however, force the system to output to a particular device using amixer.

For HDMI

For 3.5mm audio jack

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

An Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) image is available for the Raspberry Pi 2, which combines the released 14.04 distribution with a PPA containing kernels and firmware which work on the Raspberry Pi

This is a community-maintained image, and is not supported by Ubuntu. The 3.13 kernel has been replaced with an updated 3.18 kernel which is not guaranteed to receive security updates the same as the LTS kernel provides.

Download Ubuntu MATE @ ubuntu-mate.org
Download Ubuntu MATE 14.04 @ wiki.ubuntu.com