New version of Raspberry PI seems to be quite attractive base
for Robot Operating System, unfortunately last version of ROS (Jade) doesn’t
support newest version of Ubuntu (15.10). To make things more complicated
older version (LTS in particularly – 14.04) of Ubuntu may not boot at the Raspberry
PI 3. So it is a bottleneck. Of course ROS could be compiled (probably
with some minor or even major issues) from sources assuming that we have a time
for it. If so, you could use for example Ubuntu MATE and compile ROS from sources.
I am a little too old for it and I definitely have no time
for such pleasures any more.
Well I just have
downloaded the Ubuntu MATE 15.10
image and mounted it. The easiest way is to write it to microSDHC card
following the installation procedure, but *.img files could be also mounted directly. I just need
that kernel and bootloader which will work with Raspberry PI 3. So I have made a copy
of all files and directories at the BOOT (first one) partition and /lib/modules/* and /lib/modprobe.d/* from the
ROOT partition (second one). Next I have downloaded Ubuntu 14.04 LTS image dedicated for
Raspberry PI and installed it at the microSDHC card following the installation
manual presented at that web site. Then I have mounted both partitions (on
most modern Linux based systems they will mount automatically after reinsert SD
card to the reader). I have removed all files from the BOOT partition on microSDHC card
(the first one) with Ubuntu 14.04 and then I have copied there all files from the Ubuntu MATE
15.10 BOOT partition and all files and directories from /lib/modules/*
and /lib/modprobe.d/* to the ROOT partition (second) on microSDHC card with
Ubuntu 14.04. I have synced and unmounted microSDHC card with Ubuntu 14.04. The system booted with Ubuntu 14.04 on the Raspberry PI 3 cleanly and then I have installed ROS from binaries.
It may be wise to configure a little the Ubuntu 14.04 at the Raspberry PI 3 before installation of ROS. For example kernel updates could be blocked, SSH server installed and so on.
