Ubuntu 19.10 Debuts With Raspberry Pi 4 Support

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Canonical released Ubuntu 19.10 (also known as Eoan Ermine) today with support for the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. The update isn't all good for Raspberry Pi enthusiasts, though, as the company said that "Ubuntu 19.10 Raspberry Pi images can no longer boot on the Raspberry Pi 3 A+ development devices."

Raspberry Pi 4 support isn't Eoan Ermine's main draw. It also updates the distro to the Linux 5.3 kernel, introduces the GNOME 3.34 user interface and makes numerous improvements to Ubuntu's security. More information about the changes arriving with Ubuntu 19.10 is available in the release notes on its website.

In its announcement, Canonical noted that "with the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, developers get access to a low-cost board, powerful enough to orchestrate workloads at the edge with MicroK8s."

There's no disagreement here: in our Raspberry Pi 4 review in August, we said it was "the new gold standard for single-board computing." Canonical's push to support the latest Raspberry Pi also lends even more support to the idea that these single-board computers aren't just for hobbyists to play with.

Nathaniel Mott
Freelance News & Features Writer

Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.

  • bit_user
    Raspbian is at risk of becoming a second class citizen on its own platform, if they don't get with the times and add 64-bit support to their distro.

    It's not just about address space - ARMv8A has some performance enhancements that (AFAIK) can't be obtained in the 32-bit ARMv7 mode.
    Reply