Ubuntu MATE for the Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3

Martin Wimpress and Rohith Madhavan have made an Ubuntu MATE image for the Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 based on the regular Ubuntu armhf base, not the new Ubuntu “Snappy” Core, which means that the installation procedure for applications uses the traditional tools, ie apt-get.

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. But the microSDHC I/O throughput is a bottleneck so we highly recommend that you use a Class 6 or Class 10 microSDHC card. Ubuntu MATE 16.04 also fully supports the built-in Bluetooth and Wifi on the Raspberry Pi 3 and features hardware accelerated video playback in VLC and hardware accelerated decoding and encoding in ffmpeg

You’ll need a microSD card that is 6GB or greater. The file system will be automatically resized, on first boot, to occupy the unallocated space of the microSD card.

NOTE! There are no predefined user accounts. The first time you boot it will run through a setup wizard where you can create your own user account and configure your regional settings. The first boot is quite slow but, once the configuration is complete, subsequent boots are much quicker.


Ubuntu MATE 16.04 running on the Raspberry Pi 3.


Download

Run Ubuntu MATE on your Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 today.

Download Ubuntu MATE

Making a microSDHC

The image can be directly written to a microSDHC using a utility like dd, but we prefer ddrescue (from the gddrescue, for example:

sudo apt-get install gddrescue xz-utils
unxz ubuntu-mate-16.04.2-desktop-armhf-raspberry-pi.img.xz
sudo ddrescue -D --force ubuntu-mate-16.04.2-desktop-armhf-raspberry-pi.img /dev/sdx

The microSDHC may be presented on any /dev/sdX so use the command lsblk to check.

If you prefer a graphical tool we recommend using GNOME Disks and the Restore Disk Image… option, which natively supports XZ compressed images.

sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility

Making a microSDHC with Windows

If you want to make a microSDHC using Windows we recommend:

Re-size file system

Since Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 the root parition is automatically resized, to fully utilise the all available space on the microSD card, on first boot.

SSH

Since Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 the OpenSSH server is disabled by default. If you want to enable SSH you can use raspi-config to created a file call ssh in to /boot paritition and reboot.

When you enable SSH via either method explained above sshguard will also be enabled.

Enable and Disable X11

Since Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 your can disbale/enable the desktop environment using raspi-config.

Redirecting audio output

The sound will output to HDMI by default if both HDMI and the 3.5mm audio jack are connected. You can, however, force the system to output to a particular device using raspi-config.

For those of you who want to know how to do this without raspi-config:

For HDMI

sudo amixer cset numid=3 2

For 3.5mm audio jack

sudo amixer cset numid=3 1

Hardware accelerated video with omxplayer

Most videos will play with hardware acceleration using omxplayer which is pre-installed in Ubuntu MATE. However if you have MPEG-2 or VC-1 video video files then you will need MPEG-2 and/or VC-1 licenses from the Raspberry Pi Store.

omxplayer audio redirection

Should you want to manually select the output audio deive with omxplayer it can be acieved as follows:

omxplayer over HDMI
omxplayer -o hdmi video.mp4
omcplayer over 3.5mm audio jack
omxplayer -o local video.mp4

Hardware accelerated video with VLC and ffmpeg

Ubuntu MATE 16.04 added OpemMAX IL hardware accelerated video playback to VLC and MMAL hardware accelerated video playback to ffmpeg.

  • To enable hardware accelerated video playback in VLC go to Tools -> Preferences -> Video and select OpenMax IL.

  • To use hardware accelerated video playback with ffplay you must specify the h264_mmal codec.

    ffplay -vcodec h264_mmal video.mp4

Hardware accelerated playback on the Raspberry Pi works by overlaying the video directly to the screen. Therefore there are no onscreen controls for playback control. You’ll need to use the VLC and ffmpeg keyboard shortcuts.

Hardware accelerate video encoding with ffmpeg

Since Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 ffmpeg is shipped with hardware enabled video encoding via the h264_omx encoder. Here is an example:

`ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -i /dev/video0 -s 1280x720 -c:v h264_omx output.mp4`

Recent Changes

2017-02-16 - 16.04.2 Release for Raspbery Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3

  • Performance optimised.
    • Added automated first boot partition resizing.
    • Optimised partition offset calculations
    • Optimised filesystem features.
    • Disabled unnecessary services to reduce CPU cycles and RAM requirements.
  • Forked and adapted raspi-config to Ubuntu.
    • Added pi-top brightness and power-off support.
  • Backported MATE Desktop 1.16.1.
  • Backported BlueZ 5.41.
  • Backported ffmpeg 3.2 including Raspberry Pi hardware acceleration for MMAL decoding and OMX encoding.
  • Backported i2c-tools and python-smbus 3.1.2.
  • Updated raspberrypi-firmware to 1.20161215-1.
  • Updated pi-bluetooth to 0.1.2 including failsafe systemd units.
  • Updated gpiozero to 1.3.1. A simple API for controlling devices attached to the GPIO pins.
  • Updated omxplayer to 0.3.7-git20160923-dfea8c9.
  • Updated nuscratch to 20160915+2.
  • Updated picamera to 1.12. Pure Python interface to the Raspberry Pi’s camera module.
  • Updated pigpio to 1.130. Library for Raspberry Pi GPIO control.
  • Updated python-sense-hat to 2.2.0. Sense HAT python.
  • Updated raspberrypi-sys-mods to 20170208, which completely replaces raspberrypi-general-mods
  • Updated raspi-gpio to 0.20170105. Dump the state of the BCM270x GPIOs.
  • Updated rpi.gpio to 0.6.3-1. Python GPIO module for Raspberry Pi.
  • Updated rtimulib to 7.2.1-3. Versatile C++ and Python 9-dof, 10-dof and 11-dof IMU library.
  • Updated sonic-pi to 2.10.0.
  • Updated xserver-xorg-video-fbturbo to 1.20161111~122359.
  • Updated Xorg via the LTS Enablement Stack.
  • Added cap1xxx; A python library designed to drive various Microchip CAP1xxx touch ICs.
  • Added drumhat; A python library designed to control Drum HAT.
  • Added envirophat; A python library designed to control Enviro pHAT.
  • Added explorerhat; A python library designed to control the Explorer HAT and pHAT.
  • Added microdotphat; A python library designed to control Micro Dot pHAT.
  • Added mote; A python library designed to control Mote.
  • Added motephat; A python library designed to control Mote pHAT.
  • Added pantilthat; A python library designed to control Pan-Tilt HAT.
  • Added pianohat; A python library designed to control Piano HAT.
  • Added piglow; A python library designed to drive Piglow.
  • Added rainbowhat; A python library designed to control Rainbow HAT.
  • Added scrollphat; A python library designed to control Scroll pHAT.
  • Added sense-emu; A client library for the Raspberry Pi Sense HAT emulator.
  • Added sn3218; A python library to help control the SN3218 18-channel PWM LED driver.
  • Added st7036; A python library to help control the ST7036 LCD driver.
  • Fixed first boot configuration. Ubiquity now prompts to join available WiFi networks.
  • Disabled SSH by default.
    • SSH can be enabled via raspi-config or creating a file named ssh in the /boot partition.
    • sshguard is also automatically enabled when you enable SSH.
  • Reduced the image size to 5GB, down from 8GB.

Previous Changes

Known Issues

  • Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 for the Raspberry Pi is not snap compatible.
    • We hope to have snapd compatibility in Ubuntu MATE 17.04 for the Raspberry Pi.
    • The 32-bit and 64-bit PC version of Ubuntu MATE 16.04, or newer, are snapd compatible.
  • Upon completion of the first boot setup WiFi doesn’t work, at all. Reboot and WiFi will be available.

Feedback and Improvements

Please post all feedback on the dedicated community forum. If you have any improvements then please submit a pull request to the Ubuntu Pi Flavour Maker project.

This image is not an official Ubuntu image, it is community supported, so any bugs filed on the Ubuntu MATE Launchpad bug tracker will be closed with a comment directing the report to the Ubuntu MATE forums :-)