Canonical has just released a publicly available Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop beta image for the Qualcomm DragonWing QCS6490 and QCS5430 processors, and more specifically for the Qualcomm RB3 Gen 2 Vision Kit (QCS6490) and Qualcomm RB3 Gen 2 Lite Vision Kit (QCS5430).
This adds to the existing Ubuntu 24.04 Server image for the Qualcomm vision kits, and Canonical says the unified image is currently designed for developers, ODMs/OEMs, and customers who want to evaluate the solution, and certified versions of Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop and Server images are coming soon with long term support and maintenance.
Canonical explains the image enables the full Ubuntu Desktop experience at the edge with “powerful AI acceleration with high-performance graphics” (so I assume that means GPU and NPU are already supported), enhanced camera and multimedia capabilities, sensor integration, and various performance optimizations of the DragonWing family. So the way I read the announcement is that contrary to some other Arm or RISC-V Ubuntu images released by Canonical, the Ubuntu Desktop image for DragonWing QCS6490/QCS5430 makes better use of the hardware on hand.
They seem to have done a good job, and the documentation provides a list of enabled and unsupported features. As you can see from the extract above, the GPU is fully supported, but the eDP interface is not. Other features that need more work/love include UEFI secure boot, USB Hub, CAN Bus controller, suspend and resume, compress offload (MP3), and most security features.
The Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop and Server images are public and can be downloaded from the Ubuntu website, where you’ll also find links to installation instructions and release notes.
While right now, the images are made for the Qualcomm Dragonwing RB3 Gen2 Vision and RB3 Gen2 Lite Vision kits, we recently covered the upcoming QCS6490-based Radxa Dragon Q6A SBC (QCS6490), and a range of other Qualcomm DragonWing single board computers such as the RUBIK Pi 3 (available now), Orange Pi AI Ultra, MeiG Pi-QCS6490, among others, which I assume should eventually benefit from the work done for the official RB3 Gen2 Vision kits.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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