That's the easy bit. 16.04 flavour maker images came with a comprehensive ppa which needs updating too or converting to something else to achieve feature parity. (I do wonder how much of it is actually used, you don't see it written about.)
Then if you want to make official images you need to integrate the build into the various ubuntu packages that deal with this. There's probably at least three packages involved in that. Do you want a pre-installed image or a 'live' image? If it was me I would go with the latter, like omap4 used to do, see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/OmapDesktopInstall and http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/quantal/ . That will require further updates to flash-kernel-installer or ubiquity. None of these come with any documentation so simple changes can take a long time if you've never done it before.
I don't see much need for a Raspberry Pi PPA when the linux-raspi2 kernel is available in the Ubuntu repositories. Adding Raspberry Pi PPAs and adding apps from Raspbian makes Ubuntu MATE for the Pi and the Ubuntu MATE desktop version more different from each other.
Well yes, I share a similar view. And there is an argument that time has dragged on so long that an image should just be produced, regardless of PPAs etc.
However, currently you still need custom packages for Bluetooth to work and that seems pretty essential for some people. U-M has given money for the development of tomxplayer, so to not include it would be a waste of money.
There are other issues, like how much to follow the server images setup? flash-kernel/u-boot is far from ideal, for example I don't think you can use usb booting with it at the moment.
There are lots of discussion points, lots of things to tweak, but nobody is prepared to discuss it, let alone implement it. This is not a dig at @MikeRL, but there seems to have been a general shift in people using Linux. They are prepared to give money, but not invest time to fix things themselves. I feel bad that they have (in my opinion) needlessly given money to a Linux distro.
You're right; linux-raspi2 does receive regular updates and does work on the Pi 3B+, and recently flash-kernel was updated in bionic so that it works on the 3B+ out of the box (no 'Unsupported platform' error when updating the kernel). raspi3-firmware in bionic still doesn't work on the Pi 3B+ because it still uses old and incompatible bootloader files, but flash-kernel can be used with linux-firmware-raspi2 instead. linux-firmware-raspi2 now has an arm64 version and works on the Pi 3B+ and 3A+ in both architectures.
It appears even the generic kernel in Ubuntu 18.04 is based on kernel 4.15, which reached EOL in April last year. I believe Canonical are patching the 4.15 kernel in Ubuntu with patches from currently supported versions of the Linux kernel, though I can't confirm this. linux-raspi2 still hasn't received any updates since November last year, but I'm assuming it will catch up at some point.
I heard that certain extra packages are needed to get Bluetooth working on Ubuntu MATE 18.04. What are the packages I need to install, if anyone knows? Also, is there some way to get audio working through HDMI and in general? And any way to create a persistent swap file cause I'm constantly running out of memory? Using a partition did not work.
It seems that linux-firmware-raspi2 has been updated in bionic-updates so that it now works on the Pi 3B+ and supports USB booting. It also has an ARM64 version.
Had issues configuring zram.conf. Could someone please instruct me on how to do it? Tried Google and YouTube. EDIT: No need to. But I am currently trying to figure out the best way to prevent the RPi from constantly running out of memory. Any advice here would be appreciated greatly.
Remember, the Raspberry Pi 3 has 1GB RAM. Even budget smartphones like the Galaxy J3 have more RAM than that. Modern web browsers are very resource hungry and will slow down/freeze the Pi if you open too many tabs. If you want to open several tabs in a resource-hungry web browser without lag, you might as well consider a faster machine. Not another SBC, but a full-blown Intel x64 PC with at least an Intel Core i3. Don't purchase one of those cheap Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium laptops, you'll find yourself screaming at the laptop within ten minutes of using it.
I opened like one to four tabs on average and for some reason it freezes Ubuntu MATE with Firefox but not Vivaldi on Raspbian. I wonder why? I still use the IRC bouncer and RetroPi on my Raspberry Pi, though.
I'm trying Vivaldi on Ubuntu MATE now to see how efficient it is over here vs on Raspbian. Maybe there's a way to create swap on an external drive for Firefox to work. I have tried researching ways to create swap via file or partition, but none of them persist across reboots. Perhaps someone could be kind enough to give instructions? It's just that I prefer Firefox and have used it for so long. Plus all my data is on it... EDIT: Even Vivaldi is slow with more than one tab open on Ubuntu. On Raspbian, not so much. Actually, even with the 1GB swap Vivaldi also froze the whole system with three tabs open, one of which being settings. Didn't notice this on Raspbian. There's some good groundwork with Ubuntu MATE, but it's just not as optimized, at least not yet. From what I remember 16.04 was fast on my Pi 2B.
I was able to install the official Ubuntu Server 18.04 for RPI3 and then install Mate desktop on it. So far, I only faced one problem which I struggle to resolve. I setup x11vnc server and get severe graphical artifacts that renders the desktop almost unusable.
But could this be an issue with Ubuntu 18.04 on rpi3 somehow? I tried changing the x11vnc parameters but they all end up with the same corruption more or less. Can anyone replicate this on the RPi3B+?
It is looking likely that there won't be a 18.04 mate image anytime soon. However, as people have demonstrated this does not mean that you can't run mate 18.04 on a pi.
Support is not running out on 16.04. You won't get security updates on mate desktop packages, but I bet there has never been a security update in the lifetime of 16.04 on these packages. Bugs won't get fixed, but you've lived with these bugs for 3 years. So you are not loosing anything.
Firefox etc will continue to receive updates. Whether these new versions work or not who knows? It could be argued support for armhf finished a long time ago when Firefox stopped working.
Hmm. If I were to get ba Pine64 board with 4GB RAM or some alternative to the Pi (down the line of course), I wonder if it'd have the free system resources and community support the Pi 2 had on 16.04. Those were the golden days.
Pine64 looked good until I read it violates the GPL. Not a good choice.Plus that means it can only run up to a certain kernel version. The CPU is what's violating the GPL. I can't code, sadly, but I've contributed some money out of the little I make.