Available for Raspberry Pi 2, 3 Model B, and 3 Model B+

Mar 31, 2019 22:15 GMT  ·  By

Ubuntu MATE leader Martin Wimpress announced the release of the beta version of the Ubuntu MATE 18.04 operating system for the tiny Raspberry Pi single-board computers.

Martin Wimpress and his team have been working on refreshing the Raspberry Pi edition of the Ubuntu MATE operating system for a few weeks now, finally rebasing it on a newer LTS (Long Term Support) release, namely Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver).

After a few internal alpha images, the team is now ready to share the upcoming release with the Linux community, inviting them to try out the beta release of Ubuntu MATE 18.04 for Raspberry Pi, which brings lots of new features and improvements since the 16.04.2 release.

"With this Beta pre-release, you can see what we are trying out in preparation for our next (stable) version," said Martin Wimpress. "We have done what we can to optimize the builds for the Raspberry Pi without sacrificing the full desktop environment Ubuntu MATE provides on PC."

Here's what's new in Ubuntu MATE 18.04 for Raspberry Pi

Highlights of the Ubuntu MATE 18.04 for Raspberry Pi release include support for Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, and Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ single-board computers, support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet, as well as USB booting support.

It also comes with video and audio out support via HDMI or Composite (video only), as well as HDMI and 3.5mm analog audio jack (audio only) connections, automatic online file system expansion, support for Python Wheels for Raspberry Pi, and GPIO access via GPIO Zero, WiringPi, and pigpio.

Hardware acceleration is another strong point of the Ubuntu MATE 18.04 for Raspberry Pi operating system as it lets users watch videos and use advanced desktop features. It comes pre-installed with the fbturbo driver, hardware assisted video decoding for the VLC Media Player, and encoding via FFmpeg.

It’s also possible to enable the experimental VC4 driver for better performance at the cost of stability loss, and you should keep in mind that the fbturbo driver is limited to 2D accelerated window moving and scrolling on the Raspberry Pi, and VideoCore IV hardware acceleration isn’t available for the arm64 images.

Other than that, the operating system comes pre-installed with a port of the raspi-config utility for Ubuntu, the official Ubuntu kernel that’s being maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel and Security teams, as well as support for installing the Minecraft: Pi Edition video game and Steam Link app.

If you want to take the Ubuntu MATE 18.04 for Raspberry Pi operating system for a test drive, you can download the beta release right now from the official website. Please note that this is a pre-release version, so bugs may still be present. Also, the devs recommend you use it with the latest Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ SBC.