Introduction
Martin Wimpress’ desktopify project on GitHub provides the best resource for installing Lubuntu on the Raspberry Pi⁰, as it does at least five very important things:
- Provides clear instructions with video on how to perform the whole installation.
- Sets up wireless appropriately (the server image assumes Ethernet).
- Installs some important Pi-specific packages, such as
pi-bluetoothand GPIO support (you know, so you can make LEDs blink!) - Makes some important Pi-specific configuration changes.
- Installs your choice of desktop environment (Lubuntu, of course!)
Installation
- Download the 20.04 version of Ubuntu Server for the Raspberry Pi¹.
- Install the image on your SDHC card using Raspberry Pi Imager.
- Install the card in your Raspberry Pi and boot it.
- Login with username and password of
ubuntu. - The system will prompt you to change the password on first login. - Update the system with
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade. - Clone the project with
git clone https://github.com/wimpysworld/desktopify.git. - Change to the repository directory with
cd desktopify. - Install Lubuntu with
sudo ./desktopify --de lubuntu. - Restart and enjoy² with
sudo shutdown -r now.
⁰ At time of writing, the Raspberry Pi 2, 3, and 4 is supported.
¹ At time of writing, the script only supports 20.04. Theoretically, you could download one of the other images and simply manually execute the commands in the script, but it’s not guaranteed to work.
² Optionally, adding a swapfile might be useful for performance.