Ubuntu Desktop on Raspberry Pi Feedback

Hey, for those who missed out on the groovy gorilla goodies. Is there anyway to buy it? Not sure if I was fast enough to be one of the first 100. Cheers

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Gents, thanks for making USB booting possible in 20.10.
Unfortunately for me trying to boot the Ubuntu 20.10 desktop image on my Pi4 from a SAMSUNG QVO 2TB SSD doesn’t work. I suspect it is due to the large size of the disk. On first boot it expands the file system, gets to the ubuntu installer splash screen with the rotating logo, and basically stops there giving a bunch of errors such as “Failed to start Journal Service”, “Dependency failed for Flush Journal to Persistent Storage”, “Failed to start Network Name Resolution” etc.
Any ideas? Anybody tried it with a similar SSD?

So far i like Ubuntu 20.10 on the Pi 4. The only issue i ran into was Bluetooth not working properly, i can’t seem to connect my Sennheiser BT 4.40 headphones nor my iLoud speakers from IKMultimedia.
They show up in the list but are unable to connect. The Connect switch just flips back.

Still need to look into bug reports if there are any.

Anybody tried it with a similar SSD?

Two issues to check:

  1. Maybe the Pi4 doesn’t supply enough power for the SSD. You could try using a powered USB hub.
  2. Have you checked out the problems with some USB adapters? This is extensively discussed at:
    https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ssd-flash-drives/

I installed this in both RPI-4B 4GB & 8GB versions on a 32GB Sandisk SD card, not overclocked, and the installation process was flawless, connected to my WiFi network and made updates on completion. However, after the initial setup and reboot WiFi would not connect and needed several reboots to connect successfully. Note, no such problems with WiFi connectivity on RPI-OS.

The Ubuntu settings Bluetooth was able to discover and pair with devices. However, the devices could not be setup and connection could not be made. This was solved by installing “Blueman” from the software store. I found that devices had to be found and paired via the Ubunutu BT settings and then setup and connection via Blueman work at all times. Trying to use Blueman alone to discover, pair, setup and connect did not work.

Audio seems to always default to headphones and required selecting Multi audio output from the setting page in order to direct audio to HDMI. However, if you rebooted then again the system defaulted to headphones.

Moving between monitors of different sizes and resolutions. Resolutions automatically set to the optimum for the monitor and screen size required “Overscan” to be enabled and adjusted in the config.txt file of the /boot/firmware directory in order to size the display correctly.

I was able to find and install applications via the software store. However, when browsing the store the categories were not populated. I also tried installing RPI Imager from the software store but it would not function, also tried via terminal and the snap install command it told me that the application was already installed. I’m guessing here but not all applications shown in the store are actually suitable for RPI Arm64 and hence the hit or miss nature encountered i.e. the RPI Imager application is for an x86 and not Arm64 system. It would be a good idea to show which applications are suitable for Arm64 in the future.

Try installing “Blueman” from the software store. Use the Ubuntu Bluetooth settings to discover and pair, then use Blueman to setup and connect. Works everytime for me. Don’t use Bleman alone as this does not work.

Thanks for the suggestion but i’d rather like to see a bug fix to make it work ootb properly on 20.10 than to install blueman as workaround. I found a bug report on the matter already. :slight_smile:

Bluetooth works like a charm on Ubuntu 20.04.1 by the way.

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I’ve ordered a verified compatible adapter from James’ list and will try it by the end of the week. I’ll let you know. Thanks.

I work with teachers of ICT in Zambia, Southern Province, Most of the rural schools we work with do not have power. The Pi is a good choice for us because of the low power consumption. I was disappointed to see Ubuntu does not yet support Scratch 3. Without this we will still have to use the Raspberry Pi O/S. Though there is nothing wrong with this many teachers would like to be able to use Ubuntu. When do you think Scratch 3 will be available on Ubuntu.
Thanks, Kind Regards
Howard

Just another thought, I live in Wales and the Teachers I support live in Zambia. I have converted many of them to Telegram so we can communicate but I would like to be able to use Zoom on the Raspberry Pi. Is there any possibility of using zoom-client on Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi?
Kind Regards
Howard

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zoom does sadly not offer any arm builds of their client and the source is not public either, you will have to live with their web client in a browser on the arm architecture i fear …

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It’s sitting there in the wee black case in the upper left no?

It might just be your setup, the 8GB model should have no problem, the image in the RPi imager tool and on our website: ubuntu.com/download/raspberry-pi is build specifically for the Pi 4. What does your setup look like and what are you running and maybe we can figure out what’s wrong? :slight_smile:

There will indeed :smiley: stay tuned

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Not at the moment, unfortunately, if you were one of the first 100 we’ll let you know within a few weeks (sorry for the delay this isn’t something we’ve done in a while) but we’re working on something to make the goodies more widely available in the future.

Well to the Ubuntu Discourse @jorgetech :wave:

For anyone interested in USB boot on Ubuntu then we have a page in our How to install Ubuntu Desktop on Raspberry Pi 4 tutorial that tells you everything you need to know :+1:

The same process work for Ubuntu Server, but USB booting is only supported from Ubuntu 20.10 onwards.

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You can use GNOME Disks to make full card image backups :slightly_smiling_face:

As far as I am aware, Scratch 3 is only available via the Scratch website and it does work very well on Ubuntu as my daughter and I use it frequently :slightly_smiling_face:

Are you asking after an earlier version of Scratch that runs locally?

Is there a way to install 20.10 to a partition on an SSD? Both rpi-imager and etcher only install to physical volumes, not partitions. Maybe I could install on an SD and then dd to the partition?
My system is set up with /home in a separate partition, and I would prefer not to delete it.

Further report. I am having trouble getting HDMI audio to work and goes to Headphones. Works OK on Raspbian OS. I note another post has same issues.

I mentioned getting USB boot working before building SSD or HD version. Well I did not know that you can now in Raspbian OS just update to latest OS and do a sudo raspi-config and boot options will install latest boot rom. See this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suU09BMMFts

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