The NVIDIA JetPack SDK has been based on Ubuntu ever since it was created (although the Jetpack 6 SDK changed that somewhat), so I was surprised to read that Canonical now officially supports Ubuntu on NVIDIA Jetson, since I assumed there may have already been a partnership in place.
The announcement explains that Canonical has announced the General Availability (GA) of Ubuntu for the NVIDIA Jetson Orin for edge AI and robotics “bringing enterprise-grade stability and support” to the popular system-on-modules.
Canonical further explains the collaboration enables better performance with optimized Ubuntu images for the NVIDIA Jetson platform, enterprise-level security with updates and long-term support, a unified environment from edge to cloud, and improved stability and reliability with Canonical’s QA team performing over 500 OS compatibility-focused hardware tests.
If we visit the NVIDIA Jetson page of the Ubuntu website, we’ll find Ubuntu Server 22.04 images for the Jetson AGX Orin, Jetson Orin Nano, and Jetson Orin NX Series modules. But that does not mean the Jetson module must be run in headless mode since detailed instructions are provided for each Jetson module explaining how to install Tegra firmware and libraries, the desktop environment, and more. The 17-page document looks unnecessarily complicated to me, but there may be a reason why all components are not installed by default…
Besides the Ubuntu Server 22.04 image, Canonical also announced Ubuntu Core 24 for the NVIDIA Jetson system-on-modules. Ubuntu Core is a minimal, secure, and strictly confined operating system designed for the deployment of custom images for IoT and edge devices. It also supports over-the-air (OTA) updates with failsafe rollbacks and offers improved security with the separation of the kernel, OS image, and user application(s). I could not find a download link for Ubuntu Core 24, but Canonical says users will be able to download pre-built images for exploration and experimentation, and points to the documentation to build custom images.
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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