For any Linux admin who’s been looking to deploy single board computers for various purposes, there’s a new (while at the same time old) player in the Raspberry Pi mix—Ubuntu 20.10. Groovy Gorilla is the first official Ubuntu release to not only be optimized for the Raspberry Pi as a server distro, but as a full-blown desktop as well.

To make this even more appealing, Ubuntu 20.10 will include the likes of LXD 4.6 and MicroK8s for the easy deployment of resilient micro clouds, small clusters of servers providing virtual machines, and Kubernetes on demand at the edge.

Any Raspberry Pi 4 board with 4GB or 8GB of RAM can be deployed with Ubuntu Desktop or Server. And this isn’t a stripped-down version of the platform, it’s the full Monty. Canonical has put in a ton of work to optimize Ubuntu for Raspberry Pi. According to the Ubuntu PR Machine, “With this release, Ubuntu is optimized for Raspberry Pi, giving users of all levels and capabilities the access to Linux and microcloud technologies.”

Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, said of this iteration, “In this release, we celebrate the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s commitment to put open computing in the hands of people all over the world.” Shuttleworth continues, “We are honoured to support that initiative by optimising Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi, whether for personal use, educational purposes or as a foundation for their next business venture.”

Downloads will be made available starting October 22, 2020 from the official Ubuntu Raspberry Pi download page[1].

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