Canonical Launches Ubuntu 20.10 "Groovy Gorilla" with "Micro Clouds," Raspberry Pi Desktop Images
First desktop image promises "everything the average desktop user would expect" — on Raspberry Pis with 4GB or 8GB of RAM, at least.
Canonical has released the latest version of its Ubuntu Linux distribution, Ubuntu 20.10 "Groovy Gorilla," and it comes with two surprises for Raspberry Pi users: The distribution's first desktop OS image and "micro clouds" for edge computing.
"In this release, we celebrate the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s commitment to put open computing in the hands of people all over the world," says Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical chief executive, of the release. "We are honored to support that initiative by optimising Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi, whether for personal use, educational purposes or as a foundation for their next business venture."
As the company had previously promised, the Raspberry Pi family of single-board computers — and the recently-launched Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 system-on-module range — are first-class citizens for the new Ubuntu release. As well as the previous IoT- and server-focused releases, Ubuntu 20.10 brings the distribution's first dedicated image for desktop computing on a Raspberry Pi.
"On a Raspberry Pi 4 (with 4GB or 8GB RAM) you can do everything the average desktop user would expect," claims Canonical's Rhys Davies of the release. "Surf the web, watch the latest films, develop new software, read the news, or do your shopping. All from the comfort of a Raspberry Pi."
"This joining of Raspberry Pi, the incredible maker and educational hardware, used in schools, factories and robots alike, and the Ubuntu Desktop, best known for its leading cloud and desktop offerings, delivers not only a low-cost, versatile desktop experience but also a gateway to all of open source software. The Ubuntu Desktop on Raspberry Pi comes with committed long term support and a deepening collaboration upstream which, we hope, will only continue to flourish."
The latest release also comes with LXD 4.6 and the MicroK8S 1.19 Kubernetes implementation, enabling what Canonical calls "resilient micro clouds" — "small clusters of servers providing VMs and Kubernetes on-demand at the edge, for remote office, branch office, warehouse, and distribution oriented infrastructure.
The standard Ubuntu 20.10 Desktop images are available from the dedicated download page; the Raspberry Pi images have their own microsite, complete with Desktop and Server image downloads and step-by-step installation tutorials.