Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi

[Walther]

Hello folks,

Time to post about something I find close to my heart.

Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi.

Initially, it was supposed to be a match, but Canonical dropped and broke the support for ARMv6 in favor of optimizing for ARMv7 and above. I've discussed the topic at irc.freenode.com on #ubuntu-arm with the developers, and their response has been that Canonical, at this point, won't provide official support for ARMv6. However, they said, that it *could be done*, provided manpower, hardware power, and effort.

Some snippets from the discussion:


17:03:43 < rcn-ee> Walther, there is always option f, (fork).. figure you need about 10 pi's backed by harddrives, you can take the src pks of debian/ubuntu and build what you want.

17:05:35 < LetoThe2nd> i don't think the making is *that* big a deal (we've had armv5 and armv6 ubuntus already) …[snipped]

17:35:27 < rcn-ee> Walther, a lot of this is just talk… There's enough of you guys that want, please pull together, and follow the gensi example..  Before the notion of ubuntu/debian armhf, they did their own 'armhf' port of debian, and then showed what was possible with it..  They then worked with the community, then after some time, it's now in debian/ubuntu as an port..

17:38:07 < rcn-ee> Walther, figure you'd need 5-10 pi's.. just port the intial debootsrap' requirements, and get it on: http://www.debian-ports.org/


Another possibility would be to collaborate to the Linoro project – a community-based build of Ubuntu for ARM devices. http://www.linaro.org/about/

So, I am asking now: Would the RaspberryPi community be ready to provide manpower, hardware, and general effort to make this happen? There's a plenty of us, and having support for Ubuntu, the world's third most used computer operating system, would be a big step forward for the Pi.

-Walther

[john.mills]

I suppose it could be done, Debian is being ported by Mike Thompson to ARM V6 Hard Float. I guess Ubuntu would be possible. But what is the benefit, Ubuntu did not want to support the PI and was vocal about it. Debian gives everything that Ubuntu does except possibly the name.

We would always be chasing a moving target that won't be supported by Canonical. I think this is a loss for the PI.

[Walther]

I would like to re-emphasize the second last cite:


17:35:27 < rcn-ee> Walther, a lot of this is just talk… There"s enough of you guys that want, please pull together, and follow the gensi example..  Before the notion of ubuntu/debian armhf, they did their own "armhf" port of debian, and then showed what was possible with it..  They then worked with the community, then after some time, it"s now in debian/ubuntu as an port..


This might happen... Might.

[Joe Schmoe]

What is the second most widely used computer OS?

[Walther]

Joe Schmoe said:


What is the second most widely used computer OS?



From: http://developer.ubuntu.com/


Ubuntu is the third most popular desktop operating system in the world.

[Joe Schmoe]

Did you misread my question?

[jamesh]

Well, you could simply buy 10-15 Pi's and set up a farm to do all the building/testing. Still costs less than a desktop PC. Doesn't even need to be a community effort.

But I'm not convinced it give you anything more than you will get with the Debian kernel.

[dh04000]

john.mills said:


.....Ubuntu did not want to support the PI and was vocal about it. Debian gives everything that Ubuntu does except possibly the name.

I don't think Canonical decided not to support the R-Pi out of being malicious, or to attack the project. They are just not making a "universal" OS like Debian does. Debian is the better pick of the two for the goal of the R-Pi anyway. No loss, really. Ubuntu is my desktop OS, and Debian will be my R-Pi OS. Different OS for a different use.

[KeithSloan]

Would ubuntu run on a Pi? If it runs would it be usable for anything?

Take a look at the ubuntu minimum requirements https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Insta ... quirements. They are even higher than Fedora's

One day people will wake up to the fact that the Pi is only
256Mb - 32Mb for GPU = 224Mb and equivalent to Pentum III 300 Mhz

[Walther]

Joe Schmoe said:


Did you misread my question?



No, I just stated where I found the figure, and hence what I based my statement on. I will not make assumptions on the second biggest nor the perhaps obvious first one

[Joe Schmoe]

That's a lot.  My previous ARM box experience is on a machine with a whopping 32M of memory.  Of course, we don't even try to run a GUI (X server) on that...

Others will no doubt come along and tell me that they've used systems with much less than that...

[bobc]

I've gone off Ubuntu anyway I am pretty sure the loss is Ubuntu's, not R.Pi. I expect Canonical may change their mind though, although they are trying to move away from desktops to tablets etc, ignoring a popular platform is not going to help them. Canonical's decision making recently is not making sense to me.

[john.mills]

Agree completely, this is Canonical's loss. They have the money, the resources should they want. They could do what is being done here by the community and spin an unofficial port of Lubuntu or the like for the Pi. I think the Pi deserves better than being a second class citizen riding off the back of Ubuntu. Debian will always give us more control of our "destiny" in that we are not constrained by the needs / wants of a for profit company like Canonical.

I think Canonical realised that the Pi will be a success and want to back pedal a little now on the situation they brought on them selves. I'm sure Ubuntu on a successful computer like the Pi would be a godsend for the Ubuntu PR machine.

Look at this :

http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/fea.....veals-all/

The original beta boards you showed off were running Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux, but that’s no longer a supported option. What changed?

“We thought that we would try to use Ubuntu – Ubuntu’s a very professional-looking system. The problem with Ubuntu, it turned out, was that Ubuntu’s organisation – Canonical – had decided to drop support for ARM earlier than ARMv7. They’re only supporting Cortex-class ARM processors, and we don’t have a Cortex-class processor, we have an ARM11 [ARMv6].

“You know, with the majority of Linux distributions somebody got in touch with us from their organisation saying ‘how can help you get our distribution running on Raspberry Pi,’ which was fine. Ubuntu got in touch with us to say ‘how can we stop you saying that Ubuntu runs on Raspberry Pi?’ Which I thought was pretty brutal, actually. So, yeah: they don’t support our chip, they’re not interested in supporting our chip, they’ve been quite vocal about trying to stop us from saying Ubuntu, so we stopped saying Ubuntu. You could run an obsolete version of Ubuntu – Ubuntu 9.04, which I think is Jaunty – you can run Jaunty on the Pi, but you can’t run any more recent version that that.

“It’s unfortunate, but there is at least one distribution keeping its ARMv5/ARMv6 line alive specifically in order to help us, which isn’t a cost free exercise. We’ve been very fortunate that Red Hat has been extremely helpful to us, but with Canonical… Yeah. That’s the way it goes.”

[plugwash]

JamesH said:


Well, you could simply buy 10-15 Pi's and set up a farm to do all the building/testing.


Leaving aside the fact it's likely to be months at least before one customer can "simply buy 10-15 Pis" I wouldn't use Pis as the build machines for several reasons.

1: It doesn't have enough ram, even with 1GB building large c++ packages requires painful ammounts of swap,

2: It doesn't have native sata, so swap will have to be over USB. I've already seen reports of the Pi crashing under high load when using USB storage and the onboard (USB based network port)

3: It can't run the existing ubuntu arm ports

[jamesh]

plugwash said:


JamesH said:


Well, you could simply buy 10-15 Pi"s and set up a farm to do all the building/testing.


Leaving aside the fact it"s likely to be months at least before one customer can "simply buy 10-15 Pis" I wouldn"t use Pis as the build machines for several reasons.

1: It doesn"t have enough ram, even with 1GB building large c++ packages requires painful ammounts of swap,

2: It doesn"t have native sata, so swap will have to be over USB. I"ve already seen reports of the Pi crashing under high load when using USB storage and the onboard (USB based network port)

3: It can"t run the existing ubuntu arm ports


Agreed. One decent desktop PC could do the job of multiple Pi's, but you would still need a small farm for the testing of the results.

Should be able to buy multiple Pi's by August I would think.

[dh04000]

People, people. Not supporting a fringe platform is not the same as being malicious towards it. Ubuntu makes a desktop computer for 1GB of ram and P4 or better. They don't make light-weight-legacy-OS's. Don't blame a dog for not meowing.

Debian barks, meows, and tweets. Lets keep our focus on the positive commitments we have, like Debian, Fedora, Arch.

[Joe Schmoe]

We are proud cat owners.  But we naturally get annoyed when people come on here and suggest we get a dog (In this case, when people come on here and suggest that we must run Ubuntu or life just isn't worth living)

[Walther]

Joe Schmoe said:


and suggest that we must run Ubuntu or life just isn't worth living



Now I do have to comment a bit on this - I did not mean to start a flame war, and I never suggested that anyone must run Ubuntu...

Sigh.

And to the metaphor of cats and dogs - some of us would love to teach a cat to fetch a stick, despite the fact the cat will never learn to bark.

[samarthwiz]

this is actually a lost for canocial because the pi is and would be huge.

[Avoncliff]

Every one the there own ideas.
Personally I run Ubuntu on all my PC's but I use the raspberry headless and can see no advantage in swapping from Debian to Ubuntu.

[gritz]

Although Ubuntu's relentless update policy has left all of my steam powered hardware behind I find myself applauding Canonical - they've decided on a target market, they're chasing it aggressively and I hope they give "those other guys" something to think about (as well as giving Linux a bit more mainstream credibility). Surely there are enough traditional distros already? More than enough, probably.

[AngusP]

As Ubuntu is based (ish...) on Debian, and really the main reason for wanting Ubuntu is that it looks nicer than Debian (well, I think it does) and it has GUI perks like Unity (Although the Pi would have to use Unity 2D or go without, performance depending) then it could be possible to make the Pi's GUI look like Ubuntu with some handy apt-getting and tweaking config here and there? There's nothing wrong with Debian's more serious software.

[AngusP]

...done a tad of research... and Ubuntu's minimum requirements for more recent releases are above what the Pi can provide. However, you could try and put 6.06 Dapper Drake on it, as it's minimums are 256MB RAM and 3GB Memory. But the overheads of running GNOME would make things like web browsing impossible or at least frustratingly slow, and it might not even be practical to do things like compile and run programs.

[Nashafa]

I would really love to have Ubuntu on my Raspberry Pi. I just someone, somehow, is able to put Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi.

...and hopefully in the near future

[Joe Schmoe]

Why? It seems to me that Ubuntu seems to have a big brand name following - people, like you, seem to want it like they want their Coca Cola.

That, of course, is the goal of any business - to build up a brand and get people thinking they gotta have it.

To any real hacker, Linux is Linux. It shouldn't matter what brand name it carries.