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

See Ubuntu MATE 18.04.2 is coming to the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3

Just ordered a second Raspberry Pi 3+!
Don't want to perform setup and tests on my existing Raspberry Pi 3+ running raspbian & Pi-hole.

Xcited and looking forward :sunglasses:

What do you mean by "official" image exactly? There are very good reasons why I build these in bootstrapped systemd-nspawn containers.

One that is built by Canonical using their build infrastructure. One that is not associated with what appears to be a hacked website Website hacked?

Your own code makes it clear the image is not official https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu-pi-flavour-maker/tree/build-image.sh

The official Ubuntu Server images aren't built using debootstrap. The package used is livecd-rootfs. This can create a filesystem which can be used in a live CD, but can also be used to create a Raspberry Pi image with oem-config setup.

I just hope the Ubuntu MATE 18.04 image doesn't come with any of the Raspberry Pi-specific software like Minecraft Pi and Sonic Pi that the 16.04 image did. In my opinion, an operating system image for the Pi called 'Ubuntu MATE' should look and feel like the desktop version of Ubuntu MATE, with the only differences being the underlying architecture and kernel.

These will be the most official Ubuntu MATE images for the Pi you're going to get, seeing as though I'm creating them.

I'm very familiar with live-build, seeing as though that is how the PC images are created and I use it for another project I'm working on. In time I will migrate to live-build, but in order to deliver full Pi hardware support, it is not viable at this time.

The work I've done for the Ubuntu MATE 18.04 images for the Pi I have shared with my colleagues (I work for Canonical) in the Ubuntu Foundations team, so my fixes and improvements will be making their way to Ubuntu very soon :+1:

@code_exec I have learned my lesson from the 16.04 images and won't be repeating bundling everything. The additions to the 18.04 images include; port of raspbi-config for Ubuntu, Bluetooth firmware loader, fbturbo X11 driver, VideoCore libraries/tools, USB boot support, MMAL accelerated version of VLC, GPIO bare essentials and pip is pre-configured to point at piwheels.

Stuff like Scratch and Sonic Pi will be exposed via the Software Boutique in due course.

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I'm sorry but this simply isn't true is it? You can do whatever you want through live-build hooks. You've rewritten whole chunks of your flavour maker script, but you could of just as easily have rewritten it to use live-build now.

Your website is still acting like it is hacked. I'll pass on using your images.

Website is also still redirecting me to various dodgy websites.

I'm using Samsung Internet on my Galaxy S9, but am also having this issue with Chrome on two Android tablets, as well as my Lenovo laptop running Ubuntu.

What 'fixes and improvements' do you mean? If you mean at some point live-build will add a few PPAs and add a ported build of raspi-config to every Ubuntu RPi image built with it, then that is fairly concerning. live-build can already be used to create Ubuntu images for the Pi that work perfectly fine, so I don't see what additional 'fixes and improvements' are needed for a tool that creates Ubuntu images for the Pi that work just fine.

Glad to see additional work being done on Ubuntu MATE for the Pi. I tried to edit the config.txt file on the ROOT partition to enable HDMI audio, and now I cannot get past the rainbow screen. I also tried deleting the edits from my laptop and still cannot get past the rainbow screen. I tried undoing edits to a config.txt file under the ROOT partition called /boot/firmware/config.txt, but strangely when mounting it on Linux, even while browsing as root, it's nowhere to be found. I will reformat. Does anyone have precise instructions on getting audio working? I will backup this time around. Luckily much wasn't impacted because as of now, I primarily use Raspbian.

Another question - when official 18.04 drops for the Pi 2 and 3, will it include built in HDMI audio support and built in bluetooth support?

Three years after the release of 16.04 people are still reporting the same bugs https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1819549 . Has there ever been a response to these? This is the problem with PPAs.

@stillwinter Why are you here? You've only posted negative comments. You clearly are not enjoying you time here, why don't you spend time somewhere that makes you happy?

@code_exec The fixes I refer to are things like working Bluetooth. I was not referring to live-build.

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Oh okay. I just hope linux-firmware-raspi2 gets updated so that it ships with Bluetooth firmware files. It already ships with WiFi firmware for the Pi 3B/3B+/3A+.

Multiple people including myself have been redirected to various dodgy websites when directly visiting the Ubuntu Pi Flavour Maker About page. Could you look into this?

With the exception of this Discourse instance, all the sites are static HTML. Nothing has been hacked, as some implied, since there is nothing to hack.

That said, I have updated the TLS configuration at the CDN for all domains, not just the flavour maker site. All http requests are now redirected to https, strict https is enabled and all redirections are proceed and terminated at the CDN.

That has made it possible to completely disable http, for every domain, on the origin servers. All origin server connections are verified with a client certificate to ensure they originate from the frontend CDN.

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Does the RPi GPIO library like RPi.GPIO work for you guys?

I am not negative. I am frustrated. Frustrated by the abandonment of users. Frustrated by the dishonesty surrounding that abandonment.

You seem to have taken exception with me calling your images unofficial. Yet I have just followed your own description of them. What would you like me to call them? Unsupported? They are not supported by Canonical and if 16.04 is any indication they won't be supported by you. You've never acknowledged (let alone fixed) the major bugs via this forum or on launchpad. It's the same with Ryan Finnie's (another Canonical employee) Pi images - they've probably spent more time broken than working.

It is not negative to be concerned that your website was showing signs of being hacked. You can't even admit there was a problem.

It is not negative to share ways of building an image. It is not negative to update that code for no personal benefit (I created my own 18.04 installers/images a year before you).

I'm not the first person on here to point out you are economical with the truth. There is no technical reason for a delay in 18.04 images (what were the 'challenges'?). I stick with my original reply to this thread.

The Flavour Maker is not really needed to create Ubuntu images for the Raspberry Pi. live-build can be used instead. You can add your own commands to the 999-raspi2-fixes.chroot hook for adding PPAs, Bluetooth, etc. Not working for me though, it fails to configure dpkg on the debootstrap stage.

The xenial image was, in my opinion, a failure. The amount of preloaded Raspberry Pi software and the usage of the Raspbian kernel shocked me. I was expecting an image that would essentially be the same as the desktop version, with the exception of the kernel and underlying architecture. I'm glad that the bionic image will not come with all the bloat and will use the linux-raspi2 kernel.

Oh, you work for Canonical?

I am guessing the lack of "official" desktop images of any sort for the Pi from Canonical is due to some sort of corporate strategy decision? (I understand if you can't actually answer this...)

@stillwinter - I suspect based on what I've observed from Canonical that "official" desktop images for Pi aren't ever going to happen from here on out. The only official "current" releases (as opposed to 16.04, I don't remember what the status was for that) are Ubuntu Core and Ubuntu Server - BOTH of which require some sort of cloud account to even boot up initially. The Ubuntu Server images will hang on boot if you don't have a network connection due to this cloud-init crap that Canonical shoves into them.

@Wimpy - can you please pass it up the chain that Canonical's "official" stance with respect to official Pi images renders Canonicals "official" images unacceptable in a corporate environment? I'm planning on deploying Pis onto a VLAN that is fairly restricted as far as outside connectivity - we can connect to us.archive.ubuntu.com for updates but the chances of our IT department opening up the firewall for cloud-init or whatever Ubuntu Core uses for initial login are zip/zilch/zero - so Canonical's official images are absolutely unacceptable for my use case. (Which is why I'm hoping you make more progress with the Ubuntu MATE images, because I had good results with the 16.04 images a while back.)

Ubuntu core requires an account, but the server/cloud images just require a working network connection. Not sure what the latter does with it, but it is not the same as ubuntu core.

If that's still a problem then you can install via the mini iso (I posted instructions in my xubuntu thread), or build your own image using the script above. If you need Bluetooth then use the packages from Raspbian or the flavour maker ppa (the packages are exactly the same).

An arm64 generic desktop installer would be easily achievable (I've sent in patches for it). If you lobby somebody like Simon Quigley at lubuntu he might be interested in pushing it through for 19.10/18.04.3.

I think the cloud images are used (instead of plain server) because they were already developed for images so had the automatic partition resize tools etc in place.