[ikk157]

Hello there everyone!



Now that Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is on the line (its release is scheduled for the 23rd of April 2020), I decided to try out the beta out of curiosity. And what better testing candidate to try this on than my raspberry pi 4B with 4GB of RAM!



This post serves as both a tutorial but also more of a "timeline" for everything I did. So I wasn't sure which category to put this in. Admins, feel free to move this wherever you find to be the best category for this post.



Enough with the "briefing" and let's get straight into the fun shall we!

To begin with

I headed off to (http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-server/...EADER.html) and downloaded the 64-bit ARM Ubuntu server 20.04 LTS image (yes, I said server... I'll get to that in a minute).

Next up

I decided to try out the raspberry pi foundation's new raspberry pi imager (usually, I'd just use balena etcher).

Now off to flashing the image to the microSD card

I went ahead and installed then launched the raspberry pi imager, where we'll have to choose the image and target microSD card





Click on "choose os"






Then "Use Custom" and a window will pop up where you have to choose the image we downloaded previously





Then click on "choose sd card"




And select your microSD card (which you obviously should've plugged into your computer by now)





Then click on "write" and let it do its thing





You will eventually get a pop-up saying that it's done

Next up

If you have the raspberry pi 4B 4GB RAM version (like I do), this step is for you. If yours is the 2GB or 1GB RAM model, then skip this step.



Due to a kernel bug, the current Ubuntu images for the raspberry pi only support 3GB of RAM max. If you decide to boot up now, you'll notice that your keyboard/mouse won't be working as this bug causes the usb ports to become useless. So w need to do one extra thing while our microSD card is still plugged into our computer.



You'll find a "system-boot" partition appearing as a plugged in usb drive. Open it and look for "usercfg.txt" and edit it (Notepad will do) and add the following line:

Terminal

total_mem=3072

Then save.

Now for the first boot up

Remove your microSD card from your card reader (hence your computer) and insert it into your raspberry pi and power it up.



Login with the default username "ubuntu" and password "ubuntu". It will then prompt you to choose a new password, do that.



If you're using ethernet, you should be connected to the internet without any extra input required from you. However, if you want to use wifi, you need to configure netplan for that. Not going to get into any details as there are tons of tutorials on that online.



Now run:

Terminal

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

Next up

Remember how i said earlier that we're downloading the Ubuntu server image and not the desktop one? Well that is because there's no deskop image as of right now. But don't worry!



If you're looking for Ubuntu server 20.04 LTS, stop here. However, if you want Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS, you need to run one last command:

Terminal

sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop

This will take some time so grab yourself a snack, sit back, and enjoy seeing your life fall apart in front of your very own eyes! Just kidding! It will take some time though... I wasn't kidding on that part.



Once it's done, you should simply reboot (I know I said the previous command was the last one... but do you really even consider a reboot command as a part of this? like come on!)

Terminal

sudo reboot now

You will eventually load up into a login GUI, where you simply click on the "ubuntu" user and type in your newly set password... then hit enter.



And oh look! A wild Desktop appeared!





That's about it!



You might be wondering: "Wait a minute, doesn't ikk157 always say he cant edit his posts and make them look good on mobile? Something seems a bit suspicious here!"



And you're right, I still can't efficiently edit posts on mobile. However, this one wasn't written from a mobile device. For a matter of fact, I'm actually writing and editing this from Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS that I just installed on my 4GB RAM raspberry pi 4B! (No, my posts won't start looking like this as nothing beats the convenience of using the forum on the go on mobile.)



Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed putting it together!