Martin Wimpress published a new beta version of the upcoming Ubuntu MATE 20.04.1 images for Raspberry Pi devices, which you can download and test right now on the tiny computer.

Ubuntu MATE 20.04.1 for Raspberry Pi promises major new features, such as support for the latest Raspberry Pi 4 SCBs, better graphics, experimental USB booting, basic rendering for the Firefox web browser by default, support for the rpi-eeprom utility for updating the Raspberry Pi 4 bootloader EEPROM, and a new configuration tool.

Based on the recently released Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (Focal Fossa) operating system, the upcoming Ubuntu MATE 20.04.1 for Raspberry Pi release is now in its latest stages of development, with a second beta version ready for public testing.

Since beta 1, the team fixed Wi-Fi issues that occurred on the first boot during the initial setup wizard and dropped the gpu_mem memory option that lets you specify how much memory the GPU can use from the config.txt file for better performance.

The beta 2 is also powered by the same Linux 5.4 LTS kernel used in Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS, and uses the latest MATE 1.24 desktop environment and most the core apps that are also available in the Ubuntu MATE 20.04.1 LTS release for PCs.

After almost half and year, Joël Cugnoni has announced the new 2020 version of CAELinux. The latest CAELinux 2020 is based on the long-term Xubuntu 18.04 release, and comes with several new tools and updated CAELinux core packages.

Focusing on computer-aided design (CAD), CAELinux is a LiveDVD Linux distribution, which you can boot directly from DVD or USB flash drive without installation.

After last week’s release of Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS as the first point release in the Focal Fossa series, Canonical is now working on new point releases for its long-term supported Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system series.

Your reaction right now would be like… wait, Ubuntu 16.04.7? Why? Aren’t there only five point releases during the life cycle of an Ubuntu LTS series? Yes, you’re right, Canonical usually bakes only five ISO point releases for each LTS series, but sometime they have to release emergency ISOs because of some nasty bugs.

It happened last year with Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04.6 LTS (now ESM) to patch a critical security vulnerability in the APT package manager, which allowed attackers to execute code as root or possibly install malicious apps and crash the system.

DFI GHF51 Ryzen Embedded SBC runs about as well in Ubuntu 20.04 as it does in Windows 10. Everything basically works and performs well. Our testing shows AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606G processor to offer slightly better performance than the top of the line Intel Gemini Lake Pentium J5005 processor.

I also had one of the same issues as in Windows: one Seagate USB hard drive would not work reliability at all with transfer stalled. That’s probably just a hardware incompatibility, as the drive works with other platforms, and other USB storage devices achieve normal performance when connected to DFI SBC. I also noticed some artifacts with one 3D graphics benchmark, but those did not show up in other 3D accelerated programs.

DFI GHF51 is an impressive piece of hardware as it packs lots of CPU and GPU power in a form factor similar to Raspberry Pi 4 SBC. I’d like to thank DFI for sending a review sample. If you plan to buy in large quantities to integrate the board into your product, you could contact the company via the product page. It’s used to be available as a sample on the company’s DFI-ITOX online store for $378, but it has been taken down since last time.