5 ms·

Whilst the headlined article is interesting, it's a case of the new and shiny distracting from regressions in what already exists. The Raspberry Pi 5 is lackin

by JdeBP 1y ago

Whilst the headlined article is interesting, it's a case of the new and shiny distracting from regressions in what already exists. The Raspberry Pi 5 is lacking in some fairly basic support that the Pi 4 has. There's no TianoCore, no NetBSD, no FreeBSD, no OpenBSD, no OmniOS(CE) … in fact nothing at all apart from Raspberry Pi OS. A couple of of the operating systems seem to point the finger at poorly documented hardware changes that the manufacturer has been no help with. * https://github.com/tianocore/edk2-platforms/tree/master/Platform/RaspberryPi https://github.com/tianocore/edk2-platforms/tree/master/Plat... * https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/raspberry_pi/#index6h2 https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/raspberry_pi/#index6h2 * https://www.freebsd.org/where/#download https://www.freebsd.org/where/#download * https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html * https://downloads.omnios.org/media/braich/ https://downloads.omnios.org/media/braich/ So the question that comes to my mind is whether this is yet further new and different Raspberry Pi 5 hardware that comes with no software or prospect of software.

jamesy0ung 1y ago
Raspbian works perfectly fine. Most of those other operating systems don’t really have the best GPIO support which is where Raspberry Pi shines. I’d just get a cheap mini pc if I wanted to run something else.
- franga2000 1y ago
  Except the RPi is smaller, lighter, lower power and more efficient than most mini PCs. It also has a bunch of unique addon boards, many (most?) of which don't really use GPIOs, but a standard communication interface like PCIe/USB/serial/SPI/I2C. No mini PC can beat most things about the Pi, apart from performance and compatibility, the latter of which is fully the fault of the manufacturer.
  - avgeek23 1y ago
    An arduino board with a esp32 added to it can do a lot of things(minus some cam/image recognition stuff) for half the price. Rpi is strictly suited to very specific use cases.
    - franga2000 1y ago
      I've deployed my fair share of both and SBCs are still a very widely useful middle ground. Being able to use existing Linux tools instead of limited or nonexistent embedded libraries is a huge benefit. Most things to do with sound or video, for example, are totally infeasible with microcontrollers. A mini PC is noticably bigger and you need to add a microcontroller over USB if you need absolutely any real world interaction (even something as simple as sensing ambient light to adjust brightness). My new favourite tool for these situations is the Radxa X4, which is the exact dimensions of a RPi, but with an Intel x86 CPU and an onboard microcontroller to drive GPIOs.
      - avgeek23 1y ago
        Yeah rpi does have some real world usage but for many small projects that hobbyists do rpi can be a overkill. Will checkout the radxa x4 sounds interesting.
jojobas 1y ago
RPi dropped the ball relative to the competition. Orange Pi boards outperform them for a fraction of the price. There are very few use-cases where Raspberry is preferable.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- consumer451 1y ago
  I just googled Orange Pi, tried to click on the first result, which is their website. But they have no https site set up, so I got no host. Http works but only on iOS safari, that's a bit weird. Is this CN net weirdness?
  - distances 1y ago
    I got something similar last year. That was the reminder I needed that software competency actually matters too, and I went with RPi.
    - geerlingguy 1y ago
      Just wait until you try downloading Orange Pi's OS...
- rjsw 1y ago
  I have had an Orange Pi 5 max for about six months, still can't get it to boot with a serial console attached which makes it hard to port any alternative operating systems to it.
  - jojobas 1y ago
    Wouldn't that be a uboot issue? Perhaps you could piggy-back on this effort. https://www.reddit.com/r/OrangePI/comments/1buzts4/uboot_v202404_builds_for_orange_pi_5_and_b_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OrangePI/comments/1buzts4/uboot_v20...
simmonmt 1y ago
Nothing apart from Raspbian ... and Ubuntu https://ubuntu.com/certified/202310-32202 https://ubuntu.com/certified/202310-32202
spr-alex 1y ago
we've happily running on routers on the pi5/cm5 since last year (https://www.supernetworks.org https://www.supernetworks.org) and openwrt support is there as well.
zamadatix 1y ago
> in fact nothing at all apart from Raspberry Pi OS How do you figure? E.g. OpenWRT, Ubuntu, Alpine Linux, Kali, and Zephyr all offer official image support. Others have unofficial support, e.g. I think FreeBSD actually falls in this boat.
- random_is_rando 1y ago
  And if I'm not mistaken even Archlinux ARM should work.
  - doubled112 1y ago
    For the Raspberry Pi 4, did they ever release an image you didn't need to chroot into and update before it would boot?
- PaoloBarbolini 1y ago
  That's "easy" when all they have to do is to package https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux
  - znpy 1y ago
    Zephyr is not Linux, btw.
- avgeek23 1y ago
  A lot of linux native software example redshift still does not work on the rpi. Lot of things are broken. Recently i tried to use it as a basic desktop replacement until my new laptop arrives. Does a terrible f job. A 10 year old celeron n2930 based mini pc i purchased for 30$ at a scrapper performs way better than the pi4. Ran esxi and bunch of vms on top of it aswell. Sips 10 w of power.
  - zamadatix 1y ago
    I tend to prefer small x86 boxes myself but the discussion here was supposed regressions on the Pi 5's ability to run anything but the official OS, not general dislikes. Similarly, I think the Redshift thing is actually an X11/Wayland debate.
bsder 1y ago
> A couple of of the operating systems seem to point the finger at poorly documented hardware changes that the manufacturer has been no help with. If only we could have somehow predicted this. I mean who could have predicted that a company that has never released hardware documentation and screwed over individual users in preference to corporate users during shortages would get in the way of porting other OSes. <shocked Pikachu face> I mean, it's not like people have been bitching about this for more than a goddamn decade. If only we could have forseen this <rolls eyes>. An RPI5 4GB is exactly the same price and form factor as the Beagle Y-AI. You can help the folks trying to do this right or not. The choice is yours.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
- avhception 1y ago
  If there only was a way to boot an OS without having to port said OS to the exact piece of hardware... It seems the ARM SystemReady stuff is only for big iron.
denkmoon 1y ago
What does tianocore do for raspberry pi? is it just a shim to add uefi?
- MrDOS 1y ago
  Yes; it means you can, for example, install an off-the-shelf copy of Debian. See https://github.com/pftf/RPi4 https://github.com/pftf/RPi4. In theory, it's a wonderful idea, because it means you can run the same distro on your RPis as on the rest of your fleet (architecture differences notwithstanding), and therefore have consistent patching requirements, etc. In practice, as frustrating as it is that the RPi kernel patches haven't been upstreamed, they exist for a reason and I think by not having them, you're shooting yourself in the foot (even if you only hit a toe or two). Two things I observed recently when directly comparing stock Debian aarch64 with Raspberry Pi OS on an RPi4 was a 40%+ reduction in SD card read performance, and nonfunctional power control of the USB ports. Fwiw I still have a “poor man's NAS” RPi4 running Debian, and it works great. (The SD card throughput deficiencies don't affect me there because the system boots from a USB-attached SSD.) If you're able to take the time to make a situation-specific assessment of what works (and what works “well enough”) vs. what doesn't, then in the long term, you can reap the benefits of not having to remember how to handle a single oddball OS in your fleet (especially given RPi OS' particularly consumer-oriented whims).
- JdeBP 1y ago
  Yes, it is. And that in turn enables fairly simple installation of NetBSD and suchlike, which have ARM ports that know how to talk to and layer themselves on top of EFI firmware. An interesting further little feature of TianoCore particularly for Pi 4 users is that it maintains a fake hardware clock. It only ticks forward when the firmware is in boot services mode; it is persisted to the firmware's own image file in the EFI System Partition; and it isn't as effective as even a simple fake-hwclock utility. But it does satisfy the operating systems that assume that there must be a hardware clock, because every computer is PC98-compatible.
DHowett 1y ago
I’ve noticed most of the replies to your comment address the first half, and none (as of right now) address the second: > So the question that comes to my mind is whether this is yet further new and different Raspberry Pi 5 hardware that comes with no software or prospect of software. If by “this” you mean the MicroSD Express hat from the article: this is a hobby project produced by a hobbyist, who seems to have no plans to sell or mass produce it. It is unfair to the creator for you to lump it in with, and draw a conclusion from, the works produced by Raspberry Pi Holdings.

by JdeBP 1y ago

jamesy0ung 1y ago

Raspbian works perfectly fine. Most of those other operating systems don’t really have the best GPIO support which is where Raspberry Pi shines. I’d just get a cheap mini pc if I wanted to run something else.

franga2000 1y ago
Except the RPi is smaller, lighter, lower power and more efficient than most mini PCs. It also has a bunch of unique addon boards, many (most?) of which don't really use GPIOs, but a standard communication interface like PCIe/USB/serial/SPI/I2C. No mini PC can beat most things about the Pi, apart from performance and compatibility, the latter of which is fully the fault of the manufacturer.
- avgeek23 1y ago
  An arduino board with a esp32 added to it can do a lot of things(minus some cam/image recognition stuff) for half the price. Rpi is strictly suited to very specific use cases.
  - franga2000 1y ago
    I've deployed my fair share of both and SBCs are still a very widely useful middle ground. Being able to use existing Linux tools instead of limited or nonexistent embedded libraries is a huge benefit. Most things to do with sound or video, for example, are totally infeasible with microcontrollers. A mini PC is noticably bigger and you need to add a microcontroller over USB if you need absolutely any real world interaction (even something as simple as sensing ambient light to adjust brightness). My new favourite tool for these situations is the Radxa X4, which is the exact dimensions of a RPi, but with an Intel x86 CPU and an onboard microcontroller to drive GPIOs.
    - avgeek23 1y ago
      Yeah rpi does have some real world usage but for many small projects that hobbyists do rpi can be a overkill. Will checkout the radxa x4 sounds interesting.

jojobas 1y ago

RPi dropped the ball relative to the competition. Orange Pi boards outperform them for a fraction of the price. There are very few use-cases where Raspberry is preferable.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
consumer451 1y ago
I just googled Orange Pi, tried to click on the first result, which is their website. But they have no https site set up, so I got no host. Http works but only on iOS safari, that's a bit weird. Is this CN net weirdness?
- distances 1y ago
  I got something similar last year. That was the reminder I needed that software competency actually matters too, and I went with RPi.
  - geerlingguy 1y ago
    Just wait until you try downloading Orange Pi's OS...
rjsw 1y ago
I have had an Orange Pi 5 max for about six months, still can't get it to boot with a serial console attached which makes it hard to port any alternative operating systems to it.
- jojobas 1y ago
  Wouldn't that be a uboot issue? Perhaps you could piggy-back on this effort. https://www.reddit.com/r/OrangePI/comments/1buzts4/uboot_v202404_builds_for_orange_pi_5_and_b_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OrangePI/comments/1buzts4/uboot_v20...

simmonmt 1y ago

Nothing apart from Raspbian ... and Ubuntu https://ubuntu.com/certified/202310-32202 https://ubuntu.com/certified/202310-32202

spr-alex 1y ago

we've happily running on routers on the pi5/cm5 since last year (https://www.supernetworks.org https://www.supernetworks.org) and openwrt support is there as well.

zamadatix 1y ago

> in fact nothing at all apart from Raspberry Pi OS How do you figure? E.g. OpenWRT, Ubuntu, Alpine Linux, Kali, and Zephyr all offer official image support. Others have unofficial support, e.g. I think FreeBSD actually falls in this boat.

random_is_rando 1y ago
And if I'm not mistaken even Archlinux ARM should work.
- doubled112 1y ago
  For the Raspberry Pi 4, did they ever release an image you didn't need to chroot into and update before it would boot?
PaoloBarbolini 1y ago
That's "easy" when all they have to do is to package https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux
- znpy 1y ago
  Zephyr is not Linux, btw.
avgeek23 1y ago
A lot of linux native software example redshift still does not work on the rpi. Lot of things are broken. Recently i tried to use it as a basic desktop replacement until my new laptop arrives. Does a terrible f job. A 10 year old celeron n2930 based mini pc i purchased for 30$ at a scrapper performs way better than the pi4. Ran esxi and bunch of vms on top of it aswell. Sips 10 w of power.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  I tend to prefer small x86 boxes myself but the discussion here was supposed regressions on the Pi 5's ability to run anything but the official OS, not general dislikes. Similarly, I think the Redshift thing is actually an X11/Wayland debate.

bsder 1y ago

> A couple of of the operating systems seem to point the finger at poorly documented hardware changes that the manufacturer has been no help with. If only we could have somehow predicted this. I mean who could have predicted that a company that has never released hardware documentation and screwed over individual users in preference to corporate users during shortages would get in the way of porting other OSes. <shocked Pikachu face> I mean, it's not like people have been bitching about this for more than a goddamn decade. If only we could have forseen this <rolls eyes>. An RPI5 4GB is exactly the same price and form factor as the Beagle Y-AI. You can help the folks trying to do this right or not. The choice is yours.

cindyllm 1y ago
[dead]
avhception 1y ago
If there only was a way to boot an OS without having to port said OS to the exact piece of hardware... It seems the ARM SystemReady stuff is only for big iron.

denkmoon 1y ago

What does tianocore do for raspberry pi? is it just a shim to add uefi?

MrDOS 1y ago
Yes; it means you can, for example, install an off-the-shelf copy of Debian. See https://github.com/pftf/RPi4 https://github.com/pftf/RPi4. In theory, it's a wonderful idea, because it means you can run the same distro on your RPis as on the rest of your fleet (architecture differences notwithstanding), and therefore have consistent patching requirements, etc. In practice, as frustrating as it is that the RPi kernel patches haven't been upstreamed, they exist for a reason and I think by not having them, you're shooting yourself in the foot (even if you only hit a toe or two). Two things I observed recently when directly comparing stock Debian aarch64 with Raspberry Pi OS on an RPi4 was a 40%+ reduction in SD card read performance, and nonfunctional power control of the USB ports. Fwiw I still have a “poor man's NAS” RPi4 running Debian, and it works great. (The SD card throughput deficiencies don't affect me there because the system boots from a USB-attached SSD.) If you're able to take the time to make a situation-specific assessment of what works (and what works “well enough”) vs. what doesn't, then in the long term, you can reap the benefits of not having to remember how to handle a single oddball OS in your fleet (especially given RPi OS' particularly consumer-oriented whims).
JdeBP 1y ago
Yes, it is. And that in turn enables fairly simple installation of NetBSD and suchlike, which have ARM ports that know how to talk to and layer themselves on top of EFI firmware. An interesting further little feature of TianoCore particularly for Pi 4 users is that it maintains a fake hardware clock. It only ticks forward when the firmware is in boot services mode; it is persisted to the firmware's own image file in the EFI System Partition; and it isn't as effective as even a simple fake-hwclock utility. But it does satisfy the operating systems that assume that there must be a hardware clock, because every computer is PC98-compatible.

DHowett 1y ago

I’ve noticed most of the replies to your comment address the first half, and none (as of right now) address the second: > So the question that comes to my mind is whether this is yet further new and different Raspberry Pi 5 hardware that comes with no software or prospect of software. If by “this” you mean the MicroSD Express hat from the article: this is a hobby project produced by a hobbyist, who seems to have no plans to sell or mass produce it. It is unfair to the creator for you to lump it in with, and draw a conclusion from, the works produced by Raspberry Pi Holdings.