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Ubuntu Core is meant to be a very light OS, which is ideal for RPi zero. Today I run a RPi Zero using Raspbian Stretch Lite, but I would be happy to run even lighter OS, as Ubuntu Core.

What is the reason for not enabling it to be installed on the Pi Zero?

Is there a way to install it?

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  • I don't know. What do the maintainers of Ubuntu Core say?
    – joan
    Jul 16, 2018 at 11:34
  • So the Pi Zero isn't supported. You need to ask the maintainers why.
    – joan
    Jul 16, 2018 at 11:39
  • @joan edited : is there a way to install ?
    – guyd
    Jul 16, 2018 at 11:42

1 Answer 1

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Ubuntu core is meant to be a VERY light OS, which is ideal for RPI zero.

It's no "lighter" than Raspbian lite in terms of e.g., RAM consumption -- which is really a matter of how you configure the system, not the distro you choose.

It may be lighter in terms of how much space the base image requires (Raspbian lite is ~1.8 GB), but since you provide the SD card, this has nothing to do with which model you use. You could put a big card in a Zero just like you could put it in a 3B+.

What is the reason for not enabling it to be installed on Rpi Zero ?

Because the single core Pi's have an ARMv6 processor, which was arguably a bit outdated when the Pi was released (it was in fact 10 years old in 2013 -- ARM1176JZ(F)-S is the ARMv6 implementation used).

All of the existing Pi distributions, including Raspbian, are essentially tweaks of parent distributions that were not created specifically for the Pi -- they are for generic ARM targets. I believe the only GNU/Linux outfit to maintain an ARMv6 distro is Debian, and this is what Raspbian is based on.

Most of the GNU/Linux organizations, including Ubuntu, have ARMv7 distros, since there are many more ARMv7 devices around (including the multi-core Pis). But they do not have an ARMv6 one.

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    thank you for you reply. Lighter - since almost no process are running in background , which is more preferable to me.
    – guyd
    Jul 16, 2018 at 17:14
  • That is a matter of how you configure the system...and like I said, I don't believe Ubuntu uses any less RAM by default. Raspbian lite loads at 50 - 100 MB, which is normal for a headless Linux distro. Now they are all using systemd, the differences between them are trivial. Although: Ubuntu Core does look to have some unusual and desirable features, but they are not about "lightness".
    – goldilocks
    Jul 16, 2018 at 18:00

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