If anybody is interested in a 32 bit armhf version of Xubuntu 18.04 to compare with the 64 bit version, then you can download an image of Xubuntu-core here:
(this is the same file as previously linked earlier in the thread)
(Unofficial) Xubuntu-core armhf - https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvHY_kl4hMB4gQIR4CLRKQzh-GP0
Sha256sum - eb68ba83ccf9ea2974e3a3399c3e08cec819f71a2184efe133640c0796bddd81 xubuntu-core-18.04-preinstalled-desktop-armhf+raspi2.img.xz
Unlike the above arm64 installer it is a disk image like Raspbian/Ubuntu-Mate. Follow generic Pi instructions to write the image to SD card/USB drive. Should work on the 2, 3B and 3B+.
EDIT: I recommend on first boot you don’t have an Ethernet cable connected so it doesn’t download and install updates automatically. It’s best to expand the filesystem first…
On first boot you’ll be asked to enter a username, location etc. Once in the desktop you’ll want to resize the root partition to fill the remainder of the disk. The easiest way to do this is probably with growpart (here mmcblk0 is the SD card):
sudo apt update
sudo apt install cloud-guest-utils
sudo growpart /dev/mmcblk0 2
sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2Xubuntu-core is a minimal set of applications. There is no browser or text editor! To get a more standard xubuntu desktop:
sudo apt install ^xubuntu-desktopFirefox armhf is working in 18.04!