Installing Ubuntu MATE on a Raspberry Pi

This time, I’m using a kit called the “Raspberry Pi Kit for DUMMIES.”
The main unit is a Raspberry Pi 3.
By the way, “for DUMMIES” roughly means “easy enough for anyone to understand.”
Taking that positively, I decided to go ahead and assemble it with confidence.

Although it is called “assembly,” there are no particularly difficult steps involved. Simply place the board into the included case, attach the heatsinks, secure the four corners with screws, and attach the anti-slip pads to the bottom of the case.

The main board supports the following connections:

USB 2.0 Ports × 4
LAN 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
HDMI Port
3.5 mm Jack
MicroSD
USB Micro B (Power Supply)

In addition to these (and perhaps the most important feature), there is also a 40-pin GPIO header — the pin array that looks like a bed of needles on the board. However, since this article focuses only on installing the OS, we will not cover it here.
Also, starting from the Raspberry Pi 3, wireless LAN and Bluetooth are built in.

At first, I was a little skeptical that such a small unit could actually run an operating system, but since Linux could apparently be installed on it, I decided to give it a try.
After doing some research, I found many articles recommending Ubuntu MATE for Raspberry Pi.
I wondered why Ubuntu MATE was so commonly used, and it turns out one major reason is that it provides installation images specifically for Raspberry Pi.
Since I mainly wanted a quick and easy way to run an OS with a GUI, I decided to install it right away.
There is also an OS called “Raspbian” designed specifically for Raspberry Pi, and that is probably the standard choice, but I decided to try Ubuntu first.

Ubuntu MATE

First, download the installation image from the official website.
When selecting “Ubuntu MATE 16.04.1 LTS,” you will see a “Raspberry Pi” option on the right side — select that option.
Several download methods are available, but I used “Via Direct Download.”
There are multiple download servers available, though depending on the server location, the download may take some time.

Once the download is complete, proceed with the installation.
The general workflow was based on the following reference site.

Writing a Raspberry Pi OS to an SD Card

Since this TIPS article was written based on installation using a Mac, it mainly focuses on the differences from the reference site and the issues I personally encountered.

The installation process is mostly performed using the Terminal. Even tasks such as unmounting devices, which are usually done casually through the GUI, are handled with commands here.
Open Terminal and first extract the downloaded image file. The file format is “xz,” so if you do not already have the “xz” utility installed, install it using Homebrew.

$ brew install xz

*If Homebrew does not work due to errors, please refer to the following TIPS article, which explains how to repair it.
vol.55 Important Points to Keep in Mind When Installing the Popular Framework Laravel on Mac

Next, extract the xz file.
The following command assumes you have moved to the download directory using the cd command. Adjust the directory as needed.

$ unxz ubuntu-mate-16.04-desktop-armhf-raspberry-pi.img.xz

Next, write the extracted image to the MicroSD card. There is one important point here:
• Unmount the device using Terminal commands

This may have been due to the order of operations, but unmounting the device through Finder by right-clicking and selecting “Eject Disk” did not work properly for me.
Therefore, I followed the method introduced in the reference article.

Another thing that initially confused me was identifying the drive path.
Even after trying to locate it through the Volumes directory, I couldn’t find the correct path and wondered where it actually was.
To solve this, use the command called diskutil.

$ diskutil list

Running this command displays a list of disk partitions.
The disks are listed in the following format:
/dev/disk◯
Since I was using a 16GB MicroSD card, I identified the correct disk from the list.

Unmount the device using the command line (assuming the SD card path is disk4).

$ sudo diskutil umount /dev/disk4

Next, use the following command to write the image to the MicroSD card.

Writing a Raspberry Pi OS Image on Mac OS X


Once the writing process is complete, try booting it up.