UBUNTU
Get up and running with Ubuntu 20.04
Les Pounder loves Ubuntu and Pi, so all the better that he can now run his favourite distro on his favourite hardware!
Les Pounder
OUR EXPERT
Les Pounder is an Associate Editor at Tom’s Hardware and a freelance Creative Technologist. He blogs about his discoveries at bigl.es.
YOU NEED
Raspberry Pi 4, 2GB min
Windows, Linux or macOS PC
A 16GB microSD and reader
Wired internet connection
Details for this tutorial can be found at http://bit.ly/LXF268pi
Raspberry Pi OS, formerly Raspbian, has been the official operating system since the Raspberry Pi arrived in 2012. But over the years there have been a few attempts to port the popular Ubuntu distro to the Pi. With Ubuntu 20.10 being released in October 2020 - the first Ubuntu to be officially released for the Pi - we thought it would be fun to see if we can install Ubuntu 20.04 on a Raspberry Pi 4, and see what we can do.
The simplest way to get the latest version of Ubuntu is via the Raspberry Pi Imager tool, available from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/. Download and install the tool, then open it and select the Ubuntu Server 20.04 64-bit image, which will download the image from Canonical’s servers. Insert a 16GB microSD card into your computer and select it as the drive to write to. When ready, click WRITE to start the process and it should take no longer than 10 minutes to download and flash the Ubuntu server image. Once completed, eject the microSD card and insert it into your Raspberry Pi 4. Connect your keyboard, mouse, HDMI, Ethernet and finally power to boot into Ubuntu Server for the first time.