Raspberry Pi may soon become more Ubuntu-friendly

Raspberry Pi is likely to become more Ubuntu-friendly as new tools make it easier to port certain versions of Canonical’s operating system to it. These tools were created by the developers of Ubuntu MATE, which uses the MATE desktop environment as a substitute for Unity.

At present, Raspberry Pi devices are minus the graphics support necessary to run the most complicated desktop environments for Ubuntu, such as Unity, GNOME and KDE.

Developers have already made a range of Ubuntu flavours, including server versions, for the Raspberry Pi 1 and 2. The Ubuntu flavours are intended for those interfaces that won’t work on the Raspberry Pi, except if users are content working only from the command line. However, lighter- duty desktop environments run in complete graphics mode on the devices, which means that Lubuntu and Xubuntu, which make use of the LXDE and Xfce desktop environments, work well on the gadget when compiled using the MATE team’s porting tools.

Ubuntu Server also works on the hardware, which doesn’t include any graphical interface, by default. This development is expected to lure only Ubuntu power users and programmers who would like to build a more comfortable ecosystem of Ubuntu software for the Raspberry Pi.

Meanwhile, the porting tools may show the way to bigger developments down the line, predominantly in the sphere of Ubuntu applications and programs for rooted or modest devices.