Ubuntu MATE 16.04 for Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 is released

Announcements
1

Ubuntu MATE 16.04 images for the Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 are
now available for download.

The image is built from the regular Ubuntu armhf base, not the new Snappy Ubuntu, which means that the installation procedure for applications is the same as that for the regular desktop versions ie using apt-get. However, since Ubuntu MATE 16.04 snap packages can be installed alongside classic deb packages.

We have done what we can to optimise the build for the Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3, you can comfortably use applications such as LibreOffice and Firefox. Ubuntu MATE 16.04 also has fully working Bluetooth and Wifi on the Raspberry Pi 3. You'll need a microSD card which is 8GB or greater, the file system can be automatically resized to use the unallocated space of the microSD card via Ubuntu MATE Welcome. But the microSDHC I/O throughput is a bottleneck so we highly recommend that you use a Class 6 or Class 10 microSDHC card. The 16.04 release is also the first to feature hardware accelerated video playback in VLC and ffmpeg.

09_RASPBERRY.png1280×719 712 KB

Changes

2016-04-24 - 16.04 Final Release for Raspbery Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3

  • Added OpemMAX IL hardware accelerated video playback to VLC.
    • To enable hardware accelerated video playback go to Tools -> Preferences -> Video and select OpenMax IL.
  • Added MMAL hardware accelerated video playback to ffmpeg.
    • To use hardware accelerated video playback with ffplay you must specify the h264_mmal codec - ffplay -vcodec h264_mmal video.mp4
  • Increased the minimum microSDHC card size to 8GB.
  • Removed tboplayer.

2016-04-05 - 16.04 Beta 2 for Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3

  • Updated to Ubuntu MATE 16.04 including the new Welcome which comes with Raspberry Pi specific features.
  • Updated BlueZ 5.37 with patches to support the Raspberry Pi 3 integrated Bluetooth.
    • Ubuntu MATE 16.04 now supports the on-board Raspberry Pi 3 Bluetooth and Wifi.
  • Updated to Linux 4.1.19.
  • Updated to raspberrypi-firmware 1.20160315-1.
  • Updated to omx-player 0.3.7~git20160206~cb91001.
  • Updated to wiringpi 2.32.
  • Updated to nuscratch 20160115.
  • Updated to sonic-pi 2.9.0.
  • Migrated configuration tweaks to raspberrypi-general-mods and raspberrypi-sys-mods.
  • Experimental hardware accelerated OpenGL can be enabled, if you know how ;-)

Known Issues

  • During first boot configuration Ubiquity does not prompt to join available WiFi networks.
  • Upon completion of the first boot setup WiFi doesn't work, at all. Reboot and WiFi will be available.

Both these issues will be addressed in Ubuntu MATE 16.04.1 for Raspberry Pi 2
and 3 which is due in late July.

6 Likes
2

Great work !!! :slight_smile:

3

Great work - BUT (there is allways a BUT) I dont find any download link - maybe I am blind?

EDIT: It is proofen that I am blind and I will apply for an guiding dog who reminds me constantly to clear the bowser cache :wink:

5

See the link at the top of this thread :slight_smile:

7

Does mpv and kodi are compiled with mmal or openmax support too ?
How I can activate the opengl driver ? :slight_smile:
Thanks :slight_smile:
Aworan

8

The image is slightly too big for an 8 GB SD Card, although it is only 52% used. It would be nice if it could be made just a tad smaller so that people do not need to invest in a 16 GB SD card. The contents are well within 8GB.

2 Likes
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Working perfectly on my Pi2 and Pi3! Have some bitcoins :slight_smile: :moneybag:

10

All works well for me (Pi 3). File system is on a SanDisk Ultra USB stick which helps performance quite a lot. This causes one anomaly. The active boot partition on the SD card is correctly mounted at /boot, and accessible there. Bu it is not accessible from ‘Places’., etc. That only recognises PI_BOOT which is the redundant boot partition on the USB stick.

11

Does anyone know where I can get the instruction to install kodi? I installed kodi using the default repository and kodi crashed right after launch.

12

Works great and if you're having an HDMI monitor plugged on your RPi device, you may do some tweaking as follows:

In your "/boot/cmdline.txt" file, simply replace the contents with the single line (everything in one and the same line!):

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait logo.nologo quiet

In your "/boot/config.txt", simply add the following parameters:

disable_splash=1
hdmi_drive=2
hdmi_blanking=1

Hope this helps!

The only wish list I have is to shrink the image a bit further :smiley:

13

FYI… but this might make the Ubuntu-Mate on Raspberry Pi run alot better than the microSD cards:

Western Digital’s $46 - 314GB PiDrive