Enlarge / This Groovy Gorilla doesn't just have a Raspberry Pi 4 on his mind, he's got a Raspberry Pi 4 as his mind. (credit: Canonical / Raspberry Pi / Ars Technica)

Last week, Canonical released the latest intermediate version of Ubuntu, 20.10 "Groovy Gorilla"—which, for the first time, adds first-class platform support for the Raspberry Pi 4.

Groovy Gorilla itself is a pretty typical interim release, offering an updated GNOME version (3.38) with lots of bugfixes and small feature additions, such as drag-and-drop organization of folders and shortcuts in the Applications grid. Support has also been added for Windows Active Directory in the Ubiquity OS installer itself.

Canonical embraces the Pi

While it's been possible for some time to install Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi hardware, up until now that's been strictly a community effort. The Pi itself ships with Raspberry Pi OS , a Debian-based distribution whose origins began with the Pi community, but which has since been officially adopted and supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation itself. And while Canonical added the Pi as a supported platform in 20.04 Focal Fossa earlier this year, that support was only for the Ubuntu Server distribution—not Desktop.