As part of today's unexpected release of the Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, all the official flavors have also been brought up to date, including Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 LTS for Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 devices.

Martin Wimpress proudly announced a few moments ago the availability of the Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 LTS operating system for Raspberry Pi 2 Model B and Raspberry Pi 3 Model B single-board computers, an optimized build that features the latest stable MATE 1.16.1 desktop environment and supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on the Raspberry Pi 3.

"We have done what we can to optimize the build for the Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3, you can comfortably use applications such as LibreOffice, which in fact is a joy to use," said Martin Wimpress. "But the microSDHC I/O throughput is a bottleneck so we highly recommend that you use a Class 6 or Class 10 microSDHC card."

Optimized components included in Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 LTS for Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 are various file system features, automated first boot partition resizing, and partition offset calculations. It also looks like unnecessary services have been disabled for better CPU and RAM efficiency.

Here's what's included in Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 LTS for Raspberry Pi

Updated components found in the Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 LTS for Raspberry Pi release include BlueZ 5.41, FFMpeg 3.2 (with hardware acceleration support for OMX encoding and MMAL decoding on Raspberry Pi SBCs), raspberrypi-firmware 1.20161215-1, pi-bluetooth 0.1.2, omxplayer 0.3.7-git20160923-dfea8c9, and nuscratch 20160915+2.

Additionally, the python-sense-hat 2.2.0, sonic-pi 2.10.0, xserver-xorg-video-fbturbo 1.20161111~122359, i2c-tools and python-smbus 3.1.2 components are also present, along with gpiozero 1.3.1 for controlling GPIO-attached devices, picamera 1.12 for controlling Raspberry Pi’s camera module, and pigpio 1.130 for controlling Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins.

The rpi.gpio 0.6.3-1 Python GPIO module for Raspberry Pi, raspi-gpio 0.20170105 tool for dumping the state of BCM270x GPIOs, raspberrypi-sys-mods 20170208 as a replacement for raspberrypi-general-mods, and rtimulib 7.2.1-3 9-dof, 10-dof and 11-dof IMU library are available in Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 LTS for Raspberry Pi 2 and 3.

Another interesting change is that the SSH (Secure Shell) service has been disabled by default, but users who need it can enable the service by using the raspbi-config tool. It's also possible to enable SSH if you create a new file named "ssh" (without quotes) in the /boot partition. Please note that the sshguard service will be automatically enabled.

Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 LTS for Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 remains based on the official Ubuntu OS for ARMhf architecture, which means that it's not compatible with Canonical's Snappy technologies. You can download the binary image, which was magically reduced in size from 8GB to 5GB, right now from the official website.