Of note, Ubuntu 24.04 developer images are now available for the new OrangePi RV2 RISC-V single-board computer (SBC).

The news underscores Canonical’s on-going interest in the fledgling, open-source architecture. Last year, DeepComputing released Ubuntu-powered RISC-V tablet and laptop, and Ubuntu Server 25.04 was released last month with support for a myriad of RISC-V SBCs.

“At Canonical, we believe that it’s important to do our part to help RISC-V succeed and gain acceptance as an open standard. Ubuntu’s availability on the OrangePi RV2 is a testament to the continued collaboration between [us] and the broader RISC-V community,” the company says.

Adding that it ‘anticipates’ the images will ‘have a big impact and help developers build, prototype, and deploy cutting-edge applications on RISC-V technology’.

OrangePi RV2: Specs

The OrangePi RV2 is a comparatively low-cost single-board computer powered by the KY-X1 octa-core SoC (system-on-chip), supporting RVA22 and vector extensions. A 2 TOPS AI accelerator is included, and it comes in 2/4/8GB LPDRR4X configurations.

A pair of M.2 M-Key slots offer onboard storage options, alongside a microSD card slot. OrangePi say that the board is available in configurations with eMMC storage ranging from 16GB through to 128GB, which may be worth seeking out.

There’s also 2 Gigabit LAN ports, 5 USB ports, HDMI out, GPIO, and onboard Wi-Fi 5.0 and Bluetooth 5.0 BLE. The board is powered by USB-C power adapter.

Get Ubuntu for the OrangePi RV2

If you have the SBC in question you can Ubuntu 24.04 desktop and server images1 for the OrangePi RV2 from—of all places(!)—a Google Drive folder. Flash your chosen image (using a tool like the Raspberry Pi Imager) to an SD card, then boot the SBC using it.

If you want the SBC to start exploring RISC-V—performance is a way off that of years-old budget ARM devices—you can buy the OrangePi RV2 from places like Amazon*, AliExpress and (presumably) various enthusiast-focused outlets too.

  1. While Ubuntu 24.04 is an LTS release, these images do not come with explicit support guarantees for 5 years – the packages in the repos do, but the specific image itself might not. Subtle but important difference and why I’ve chosen to refer to it as “Ubuntu 24.04”. ↩︎