Your GitHub link is for an 18.04 64 bit image for the Pi 3. Will this image run on a 3B+ or is there a different image for this Pi?
By ‘Pi 3’ I mean all Pi 3 models. This includes the 3B+.
I burned your 18.04 Mate image to sd card with Etcher and tried to boot my 3B+. It never got past the rainbow screen. The red light blinked once and never blinked again. Then the green light blinked 4 times slowly followed by 4 times rapidly. This green light pattern continued to repeat.
FWIW, if my memory serves me, this is the same behavior I saw trying to boot Mate 16.04 on my 3B+ before copying the appropriate files from an updated raspbian stretch installation to the PI_BOOT and PI_ROOT partitions on the Mate 16.04 sd card. I can’t imagine copying these same files from a 32-bit raspbian install would allow your 64-bit Mate image to boot, so I haven’t tried this.
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I updated the bootloader files so this shouldn’t happen, but thanks for testing. The images do hang on the rainbow screen before booting for a few seconds because of the initramfs. This issue isn’t specific to my images so please report it on Launchpad. I do hope that this issue gets solved at some point.
Does “do-release-upgrade” work for anyone else because it does not work for me. I get an error because there needs to be more storage in /boot. If i give more storage in /boot would it work?
If you are trying to upgrade Mate 16.04 to version 18.04, yes “do-release-upgrade” does work. The size of the boot partition does need to be increased. See graf_eberstein’s thread:
He discusses the need to enlarge to boot partition and ways to do it. I simply used gparted to enlarge the boot partition. His thread also discusses step-by-step instructions on how to upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04. It all worked for me best starting with a clean install of 16.04.
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do-release-upgrade is not meant for use on the Pi. The Ubuntu MATE, Lubuntu, and Xubuntu images use the Raspbian kernel and the Ubuntu 16.04 armhf (ARMv7) base. do-release-upgrade attempts to install the standard bootloader.
You could probably delete everything from /boot and then run do-release-upgrade, then delete everything from /boot again, and then run rpi-update. This would make enough space for the standard bootloader, allowing you to continue with the installation, then remove the standard bootloader, and then reinstall the Raspbian bootloader and kernel. I haven’t tried this though.
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What I did was I removed /boot while i made a new partition to replace it with more memory. And now it is installing probably for a long time. I do not know how to get the left over unallocated partition back to my root tho.
I’ve just looked further into the issue. It appears that raspi3-firmware configures the config.txt to boot from a 3B dtb. Simply comment out the device_tree in the config.txt and it should work on the 3B+.
So if there is a way for ubuntu mate 18.04 to be on the pi 3 b(+) then why doesn’t ubuntu mate share an image to get it on their website as a beta test?
Martin Wimpress, leader of the Ubuntu MATE project and developer of the Pi port, claims to be experiencing issues creating 18.04 images for the Pi. Ubuntu MATE 16.04 doesn’t work on the Pi 3B+ and 3A+ because it uses an old bootloader and kernel incompatible with these models. The 3B+ and 3A+ uses the second revision of the BCM2837 SoC, known as the BCM2837B0, whereas the Pi 3B and Pi 2B revision 1.2 use the first revision of the BCM2837 SoC known as the BCM2837A0. Therefore, Ubuntu MATE doesn’t boot on the Pi 3B+ and 3A+ because it uses an old bootloader which doesn’t support the BCM2837B0.
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Thanks for your effort. Commenting out the device_tree line in config.txt did not change the boot behavior on my 3B+. It still would not get past the rainbow screen and the blinking light behavior was the same as before.
Hello and thanks for working on this! I have it installed and running on a Rpi3B (not B+).
The install went without any issues… at all. It has had several running issues, most are now resolved. There are a few BIG ones remaining. One of which, has beaten me into a wet noodle. Is this the forum you would choose to pick the bones? if not where?
I will test it for you - need a pi 3b + to run Ubuntu Mate very badly… downloading your 18.04 now and will report back
What do i test ???
Report issues in the Issues section on the GitHub page.
I looked at it, first tried the ubuntu image, didnt work, then copied the files from XUBUNTU - it booted
didnt knew the password was ubuntu, took a few tries.
Desktop booted, after a brief BLANK/BALCK Screen - then the top/bottom panels were BLANK and never loaded any panels.
sudo raspi-config works, but didnt do some of the options I tried to change, Enable SSH, VNC and setting WIFI through it.
Right clicked on TOP bar, got the context menu, ADDED panels, Main menu and Network - WiFi worked, connected to network.
But now moving back to Pi 3B and Mate 16.04 - as I need to run ROS… 
Can check more and test more if you have some specific things to check.
can I ask if there will be an official release iso, one that installs, operates just the same as that for 16.04
for 18.04, raspberry pi model b
before 16.04 runs out of support (april)
According to the Arch Wiki, you can blacklist kernel modules. This means you could blacklist the experimental VC4 driver kernel module and continue using the generic kernel and GRUB2. I may take a look when I have time. Since debootstrap is failing me, I’ll use a premade Ubuntu ARM64 filesystem instead.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_module#Blacklisting
I’ll probably ditch raspi3-firmware in future releases of my Ubuntu images and switch to using u-boot and the linux-raspi2 kernel.