I used to write about Kubuntu when its new version was released. But for now, since my HDD is rather broken, and I have bought Raspberry Pi instead, so I want to write about Mate flavor of Ubuntu which fit to the ARM platform. Actually I want to install KDE on it, but I’m not sure about the performance.
Last month, the new long-term supported Ubuntu version was released. The main flavor with Unity has not yet brought awaited Unity 8 with Mir display server. And for my favorite flavor, Kubuntu, it has brought the newest KDE Plasma 5 for the desktop. Unfortunately I cannot play with it until I repair my PC. Maybe not only repairing, but also I ought to buy a new HDD as well.
Since I could by a Raspberry Pi 2, I can try Mate desktop in Ubuntu. Eventually I can use Gnome 2 desktop again. As it’s my first favorite desktop before KDE then, when Unity wasn’t already released.
Actually Raspberry Pi is inadequate for my computing needs. With PC, I can develop website with Laravel and running Apache or Nginx simultaneously. Or sometimes I code C++ with Qt Creator and compile the source. And I also need to compile an Android app using Cordova that’s powered by NodeJs. Then I also sometimes watching video on Youtube or just browsing the web as well as Facebook, blogging etc.
By having Raspberry Pi, I just expect the basic computing, but not limited for watching video. Its GPU is able to play HD video smoothly, although I cannot control the video size in the screen. VLC can play video with mmal module which utilizing Pi’s hardware acceleration. But it always played in fullscreen, and I cannot stop the playback with the shortcut key.
Other than that, I am still able to do packaging of Hafal Quran app via Launchpad. And the Pi is used for testing the build result. Pi becomes more popular, and it encourages me to provide the ARM binary of the app. And fortunately, the packaging was running flawlessly in Launchpad. Also, the binary runs smoothly in Ubuntu Mate 16.04 for Raspberry Pi.
Next time when I have my PC repaired, I will make use of Pi as a headless server. Since I have only one monitor. 😀