While everyone is focused on the launch of the official Ubuntu 15.10 flavors, the Ubuntu MATE team has been working on the Raspberry Pi 2 version, and it looks like it’s going to be a glorious one.
Raspberry Pi 2 is having the same kind of success like the previous iteration, but the difference is that there are more distros for the second version. Ubuntu MATE is one of the operating systems that have been adapted to run on the Raspberry Pi 2, and the fact that developers intend to release a new major update every six months is unique among the supported OSes.
Even if the Raspberry Pi 2 operating systems do get updated from time to time, none of them has the same cadence. The interesting thing about this flavor is that it’s not actually an official one. Nonetheless, the Ubuntu MATE devs are doing this at their own expense, without the support of Canonical’s infrastructure, but who’s to say that it won’t change in the future?
Ubuntu MATE 15.10 for Raspberry Pi 2 is right one time
We spotted the information about the Raspberry Pi 2 version of Ubuntu MATE 15.10 in the regular announcement regarding the donations towards the project. It looks like the makers of this operating systems wanted to expand a little more on the information, and they have detailed what’s new.
“The Ubuntu MATE team have been working on a revised image for the Raspberry Pi 2 based on Ubuntu MATE 15.10. It will be released on October 22nd, 2015. The Raspberry Pi community have been generous with their donations to Ubuntu MATE, so we felt we really needed to improve Ubuntu MATE with those people’s requirements firmly in mind. So we’re sharing the feedback we’ve received about Ubuntu MATE 15.04 for the Raspberry Pi 2 and how we’ve (hopefully) improved the 15.10 release based on that feedback,” wrote Martin Wimpress, one of the Ubuntu MATE developers.
According to the changelog, improved GPIO support has been added (Python 2.7.x and Python 3.4.x libraries, raspi-gpio, python-rpi.gpio, python3-rpi.gpio, and quite a few others), a graphical utility to disable/enable the MATE desktop environment for easily creating a headless “server” has been brought, and the old oem-config wizard has been replaced with the much better Ubuntu MATE Welcome.
Interestingly enough, the developers have also added Linux kernel 4.1.10 (kernel, firmware, and drivers are taken from the Raspberry Pi Foundation), Minecraft Pi Edition 0.1.1-4 has been offered, Scratch 20150916 has been implemented by default, Sonic Pi has been upgraded to version 2.7.0-1, and python-astropi and python3-astropi have been added, along with python-pygame.
Ubuntu MATE 15.10 for Raspberry Pi 2 is scheduled to arrive on October 22.
Via Softpedia