Ubuntu hardware support documentation

Ubuntu hardware support documentation covers installing Ubuntu on non-PC hardware — including Raspberry Pi and RISC-V single-board computers — and building custom Ubuntu-based images for hardware not yet supported by Ubuntu.

The documentation spans two guides. The boards documentation covers installing Ubuntu on specific Ubuntu-supported and community-supported hardware, configuring boards for use cases such as headless operation and camera access, and understanding the image types and boot mechanisms in use. The Image Cookbook covers building, packaging, and distributing custom Ubuntu images using ubuntu-image, Launchpad PPAs, and custom kernel packages.

These guides address the need to run Ubuntu on hardware where a standard installation is unavailable or insufficient. The boards documentation provides tested installation paths for supported boards and explains common boot and hardware configuration scenarios. The Image Cookbook provides the steps to create distributable Ubuntu images for new hardware platforms.

This documentation is for hardware engineers, system integrators, and developers working with non-PC hardware. It assumes familiarity with Linux and the command line, but does not require prior experience with Ubuntu image-building tools or Launchpad.

In this documentation

This section maps every major page in the docs set by subject, giving direct access to content across Diátaxis types without depending on sidebar navigation.

For a guided introduction, start with the installation tutorials.

Installing Ubuntu on boards

Each row links the per-board installation pages for a specific platform.

Hardware configuration

These guides cover setup tasks and troubleshooting methods that apply across one or more board families.

Building custom images

This section covers the complete Image Cookbook workflow: from setting up Launchpad infrastructure to creating distributable Ubuntu images for new hardware.

Reference and background

These pages provide specifications, test cases, and conceptual explanations that support the tasks described in the tutorial and how-to sections.

How this documentation is organized

This documentation uses the Diátaxis documentation structure.

  • Tutorials • Image Cookbook tutorials — installing Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi, and creating a custom Ubuntu image and kernel package.

  • How-to guides • Image Cookbook how-to guides — per-board installation for Ubuntu-supported and community-supported hardware, hardware configuration, image creation with ubuntu-image, packaging, and Launchpad setup.

  • Reference — specifications for firmware requirements, gadget.yaml, image-definition.yaml, and image-building tools.

  • Explanation • Image Cookbook explanation — background on Ubuntu image types, the Raspberry Pi A/B boot mechanism, and the RISC-V boot flow.

Project and community

Ubuntu hardware support documentation is part of the Ubuntu documentation ecosystem, with both guides maintained as a community effort under the Canonical organization on GitHub.

Get involved

Use the issue tracker to report problems, browse the source in the GitHub repository, or consult the contribution guidelines before opening a pull request.

Governance and policies