Porting Ubuntu For Raspberry Pi 2 Just Got a Lot Easier

prisoninmate writes: Ubuntu Pi Flavour Maker is an open source tool, a shell script that lets anyone port any of the official or unofficial Ubuntu Linux flavors for the Raspberry Pi 2. Ubuntu Pi Flavour Maker is officially supported on the Ubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME flavors, and uses the traditional apt and dpkg package management systems from Debian GNU/Linux.

Re:Mmmmm

[ChunderDownunder]

To paraphrase Henry Ford,

"you can have any flavour of pi, so long as it's raspberry".

Pi2, not the original Pi

[billstewart]

This is the newer Raspberry Pi 2, not the original A/B/A+/B+ flavors of the Raspberry Pi or the new $5 Pi0, which use an earlier ARM version than the Pi2.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Except people are buyig the Pi because it's 1/3 the cost of that board.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 IoT is awesome. With Windows 10 IoT, I can run Halo in full HD on a $35 Raspberry Pi 2, plus all the other thousands of games available for Windows!

Re:

[unixisc]

No, you can't! Windows IoT is like Windows RT - it's there just for ARM. This platform would get the same reception like Windows NT on RISC platforms some 20 years ago

Re:

[unixisc]

That is b'cos SOME Microsoft apps are Universal, and therefore run on all platforms. But the vast majority of games written by other vendors would be very platform specific. There is nothing magical about the Windows architecture in the way of a Java Dalvik that enables apps to run agnostically on all CPUs.

Besides, who exactly wants to get a R-Pi to just play games? These are kits to make simple, embedded applications to make something useful. Like controlling your garage door opener, or things like

Re:Porting? DE on a boxed SoC?

[unixisc]

That is what I was wondering. The default distribution that R-Pi comes w/ is Debian, so it already has the distro on which Ubuntu is derived. Is the issue here porting the likes of Mir onto the platform, as opposed to X11?

But I doubt that Windows IoT will go anywhere

Porting

[sunderland56]

This is merely a packaging tool. This is not porting; the images are created from already ported code.

Sure, the tool may be useful; but call a spade a spade, not an automatic garden restructuring device.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Except now that we equivocate "developer" and "programmer" and "engineer", why be critical of someone who decided to call a shell script a "port" ?

Why do you hate America, where every child is above average?

Re:

[JoeMerchant]

So, can you package the Raspbian Desktop (sorry, too lazy to look it up) instead of Gnome and actually get decent desktop performance in Ubuntu, or is that a cluster- of an experience?

Ubuntu SE

[fph il quozientatore]

Does it support Ubuntu Satanic Edition, too?

Re:

[ChunderDownunder]

Open source graphics drivers for the platform are being developed for X11/Mesa/Wayland, so graphics shouldn't be too shabby and certainly more open than the average ARM smartphone.

Easy as pi

[niftymitch]

This is almost cool.
The R-Pi is a nice little machine.
not too powerful to challenge the big guys.
not too worthless to be uninteresting.

Sufficiently interesting at all levels from bootstrap to random ABI changes to OS
development to web servers to learn almost any programming language.

Vastly more interesting than a multi million dollar CDC 6400 or other
machines from the 60's like IBM 1401 or PDP8.
Way more powerful than a Kim-1 or an Apple I or II.

This may make the Pi funner still.
Yes I am a fan of Pumpkin Pie.

Porting and packaging are two different things!

[gnus_e]

From techopedia -> "Definition - What does Porting mean? : Porting is the process of adapting software in an environment for which it was not originally written or intended to execute in. What Ubuntu Pi Flovour Maker does is Packaging. n which individual files or resources are packed together as a software collection that provides certain functionality as part of a larger system Title is misleading.