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A new super-cheap version of the Raspberry Pi was recently announced. I'd like to stuff these all over my house doing cool nonsense.

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My question is, will I be able to use Ubuntu on them?

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  • Even with the new version 2 of the original board, Ubuntu is still not yet there. The new Snappy stuff is ... well, not Ubuntu yet.
    – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
    Nov 27, 2015 at 16:27
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    @ThorbjørnRavnAndersen ubuntu mate is on the rpi2 though.
    – Mateo
    Nov 28, 2015 at 2:16
  • You can now. Canonical has resources for this. Why no updates?
    – mckenzm
    Nov 20, 2021 at 14:30

2 Answers 2

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No, not on the Zero v1

The Raspberry Pi Zero runs the same architecture processor as the first RasPi, an ARMv6 arch ARM11. It's clocked faster than the original but it's not the ARM Cortex-A7 that the Raspberry Pi 2 has.

Ubuntu's ARM CPU support starts at the ARMv7 architecture.

You could recompile everything for ARMv6 but it literally would mean compiling and repackaging everything. It would be far more practical to just use Raspbian. This is a Debian redistribution that targets the original Raspberry Pi. Because it's Debian, it's technically very similar to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu's limited ARM support also means that Launchpad doesn't support ARMv6 so you won't be able to use Ubuntu PPAs either (unless they are naturally arch-independent, which some are).

Later hardware versions have different CPUs on, v2 can run 32bit Ubuntu currently, though that is not what this question deals with.

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    +1 I'd like to add to this excellent answer that especially when you start using these things without a monitor (doing cool things around the house), then there isn't much difference between Raspbian and Ubuntu.
    – Jos
    Nov 27, 2015 at 9:05
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    Right, the most obvious difference between Ubuntu and Raspbian is that the former defaults to Unity, while Raspian comes with LXDE. I instead use XFCE on both my laptop (Xubuntu) and my rpi2, and this way both operating systems feel almost exactly the same even in graphical mode.
    – leftaroundabout
    Nov 27, 2015 at 17:21
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    The most obvious difference between Raspbian and Ubuntu is Ubuntu has Snappy, which is ideal for embedded applications since it is highly resistant to SD card corruption...
    – Alistair Buxton
    Nov 27, 2015 at 19:26
  • snappy is getting into Debian so should be in the next release!
    – IceyEC
    Jan 15, 2017 at 10:39
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    It's worth noting that the new "Zero W" (and Zero v2) has better specs in a number of ways, but still runs the same ARM11 as the other Zeroes - and as the "original" Pi A/B models.
    – dannysauer
    Jul 28, 2017 at 0:34
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YES for Raspberry pi zero 2

From this page https://ubuntu.com/download/raspberry-pi

Ubuntu Server 21.10

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Ubuntu core

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  • @karel The question isn't about the Pi Zero 2 though. If it were just a software update, or something like that, I might agree but this a new product. I think it's okay to let 6 year old questions about 6 year old products stay meaning those things. If you want to ask and answer for V2, have at it.
    – Oli ♦
    Dec 29, 2021 at 22:42
  • @oli There are several comments under the question that are precisely mentioning the W2. We should not be closing the possibility that, after 6y, somebody may jump into stackoverflow and be mislead by an old answer, erroneously thinking that his RpyW2 is not exactly the one that is being described in the question.
    – Raffi
    Dec 30, 2021 at 21:15
  • Nobody's being mislead. This Q&A is still accurate for v1 of the hardware. If you want to answer for V2, V3, etc, ask [and answer] another question (if it doesn't already exist). It's impractical to update every question to cover every hardware version of every product that it might one day be about. Not only do you have old comments and answers to compete against (as well as switching accepted, etc), again, for the people who have a v1 Zero, this question and answer are still entirely accurate. I'll add a V1 to the title.
    – Oli ♦
    Jan 10, 2022 at 13:44
  • As the question was written when I landed here, it was mentioning "Raspberry Pi Zero" without any mention of the version of it. I added an answer completing yours saying that this is possible /now/ with the RPiZ2. The question was open to any RPiZ when I answered it (because yes, it was a long time ago), but it actually mislead me. You then edited the question which scopes the topic better /today/, but this was not the original question neither. Placing the question into its initial context is always good, but as a user I prefer letting the option of updated answers.
    – Raffi
    Jan 10, 2022 at 15:31

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