Compatibility with ubuntu 16.04 and ROS kinetic

I am planning to purchase jetson nano for an autonomous project involving thermal camera. The camera driver is integrated with ROS (Robot Operating System) Kinetic. Ros kinetic does not run on Ubuntu 18.04. As far as I understood the installation image provided is for Ubuntu 18.04. I would like to know if it is possible to install Ubuntu 16.04 (which support Ros kinetic) manually and install NVIDIA Jetpack SDK separately.

At this time JetPack supports Ubuntu 18.04. ROS Melodic is the version of ROS that runs on Ubuntu 18.04.

Have you tried the thermal camera with ROS Melodic? I have not had porting issues between Kinetic and Melodic, it seems to be a smooth transition in my experience.

Please give the image which has Ubuntu 16.04

JetPack supports Ubuntu 18.04 for all the Jetson platforms, including Nano, TX1/TX2, and Xavier. Ubuntu 16.04 is 3 years old at this point and we don’t have plans to provide official image for it. Perhaps the community will release a port at some point.