Status of Ubuntu MATE 18.04 for Raspberry Pi 3 B & B+?

linux-raspi2 is still at version 4.15 in bionic:

https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic-updates/linux-raspi2

Support for kernel 4.15 ended in April:

You say that youā€™ve done your best to support Ubuntu MATEā€™s Raspberry Pi port, but youā€™ve never seemed to consider helping with the port itself. Wimpy is the only person working on the Pi port right now.

If you need testers for 3B+, let me know. Iā€™m interested.

Yes, I need testers for the Pi 3B+, since I donā€™t own this model.

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 ā€˜Pi 3ā€™ 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 canā€™t imagine copying these same files from a 32-bit raspbian install would allow your 64-bit Mate image to boot, so I havenā€™t tried this.

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I updated the bootloader files so this shouldnā€™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 isnā€™t specific to my images so please report it on Launchpad. I do hope that this issue gets solved at some point.

Does ā€œdo-release-upgradeā€ 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 ā€œdo-release-upgradeā€ does work. The size of the boot partition does need to be increased. See graf_ebersteinā€™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 havenā€™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.

Iā€™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 doesnā€™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 doesnā€™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 doesnā€™t boot on the Pi 3B+ and 3A+ because it uses an old bootloader which doesnā€™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 issuesā€¦ 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 badlyā€¦ downloading your 18.04 now and will report back

What do i test ???

Report issues in the Issues section on the GitHub page.

Be aware of https://github.com/CodeExecution/Ubuntu-ARM64-RPi/issues/2