OS download is rather useless

[picandies]

Is it necessary though? Don't forget a Pi with a fresh image installed works just fine. One can use it out of the box. Most people don't need the latest and greatest version of anything to get going. Installing updates hardly takes very long and can be done in the background without interrupting ones Pi adventures.

You seem to be missing the point or not reading from the beginning....the newbie is setting up their SD card, it does not work out of the box. Updating can take 1/2 hour or more. Whether most people need the latest or not, as soon as the system installs , it then states that is is looking for upgrades to install, please wait...so they will wait and wait and wait. It's doubtful any newbie will try using it while the screen shows the update is in progress. In fact, the official instruction make it sound very unlikely to a newbie that the system is ready to use, until everything is finished:

Click on Next to start the setup.
Set your Country, Language, and Timezone, then click on Next again.
Enter a new password for your Raspberry Pi and click on Next.
Connect to your wireless network by selecting its name, entering the password, and clicking on Next.
Note: Wait until the wireless connection icon appears and the correct time is shown before trying to update the software.
Click on Next, and let the wizard check for updates to Raspberry Pi OS and install them (this might take a little while).
Click on Restart to finish the setup.
Note: You will only need to reboot if that’s necessary to complete an update.

[drgeoff]

..the newbie is setting up their SD card, it does not work out of the box. Updating can take 1/2 hour or more. Whether most people need the latest or not, as soon as the system installs , it then states that is is looking for upgrades to install, please wait...

ISTR one is given is the option of skipping that.

[incognitum]

They are effectively beta's so should be treated as such - promoting too heavily means people who should NOT be using them end up using them, which can end up detrimental overall.

But if your "first use wizard" does the programmatic equivalent of "apt upgrade", doesn't the user end up with the same "beta" packages as the nightly image has that pi-gen spit out?

My understanding is that if the initial upgrade breaks the system the user can always reflash the card and decide to not perform the upgrade until the bugs in the repository have been sorted out. On the other hand, if the latest SD card image doesn't work, there is no recourse but to download another image and try that.

But in both cases the user has to reflash.

And at least user can fill a clear report: nightly dated xx-yy-2020 is broken!
As opposed to saying: whatever magic combination of packages I received today during initial run from some unknown mirror did not work!

[picandies]

ISTR one is given is the option of skipping that.

That's a somewhat nonsense comment---why would a newbie (parent, kid, whoever) who's never seen an rpi, buy one, be in the process of setting it up, be told that updates are being found to install, Click on Next, and let the wizard check for updates to Raspberry Pi OS and install them
.... then tell the system NO DON"T INSTALL THESE? Perhaps 0.01% might , but 99.99% will install.

Perhaps if the following notice were included" NOTICE---updates have been found for your system, INSTALL AT YOUR OWN RISK, installing these untested updates may result in a non-functional rpi, requiring a new installation.. fewer newbies would do the update. Is that preferred?

[ejolson]

But if your "first use wizard" does the programmatic equivalent of "apt upgrade", doesn't the user end up with the same "beta" packages as the nightly image has that pi-gen spit out?

My understanding is that if the initial upgrade breaks the system the user can always reflash the card and decide to not perform the upgrade until the bugs in the repository have been sorted out. On the other hand, if the latest SD card image doesn't work, there is no recourse but to download another image and try that.

But in both cases the user has to reflash.

And at least user can fill a clear report: nightly dated xx-yy-2020 is broken!
As opposed to saying: whatever magic combination of packages I received today during initial run from some unknown mirror did not work!

It seems a reasonable solution might be for the official imaging program to ask whether you want to

• flash the old image and upgrade it (recommended)

or

• flash the nightly image (faster)

so beginners could make a choice that takes into account a possibly metered Internet connection and patience.

[rpdom]

installing these untested updates

What untested updates? This is just FUD. The updates have been tested and work. The only thing that hasn't been tested is the full image with those updates included. It is the build that hasn't been tested. Not the updates.

[hansotten]

[
It seems a reasonable solution might be for the official imaging program to ask whether you want to

• flash the old image and upgrade it (recommended)

or

• flash the nightly image (faster)

so beginners could make a choice that takes into account a possibly metered Internet connection and patience.

Beginners and nightly, not a good combination ... bad idea.

'old' here means latest image version tested, released and supported, so fit for beginners and 'users', not bleeding edge, expecting things to fail' type of users.

[picandies]

What untested updates?

apparently you haven't been reading all the posts, or are confused...
No way could it be done for the 1st of each month - takes longer than a month to test all the changes. Which is one reason why it's about every 6 months.
if the initial upgrade breaks the system the user can always reflash the card and decide to not perform the upgrade

So you say the upgrade is tested, that's good.
If everything IS working fully, then certainly those should be included in the initial download.

[ejolson]

It seems a reasonable solution might be for the official imaging program to ask whether you want to

• flash the old image and upgrade it (recommended)

or

• flash the nightly image (faster)

so beginners could make a choice that takes into account a possibly metered Internet connection and patience.

Beginners and nightly, not a good combination ... bad idea.

'old' here means latest image version tested, released and supported, so fit for beginners and 'users', not bleeding edge, expecting things to fail' type of users.

Are the nightly images expected to fail? I thought they were nightly images of the stable branch. Is there a version of Raspberry Pi OS based on Sid as well?

[hippy]

installing these untested updates

What untested updates? This is just FUD. The updates have been tested and work. The only thing that hasn't been tested is the full image with those updates included. It is the build that hasn't been tested. Not the updates.

At the risk of getting trapped in a time vortex; which updates ? By which I mean which have been tested and work, where it would be FUD to say they haven't been tested ?

I thought we were talking about updates for packages which arrive when one executes the "sudo apt full-update" command, which I also presume is what the 'update' option during install does if one doesn't skip that.

If so; it was only a few days ago we were being told there was no guarantee of anything regarding updates to packages from the repository. No guarantee of those having been tested or working or even not being malware.

That seems the same with nightlies; they are beta, no guarantees there either.

[picandies]

'old' here means latest image version tested, released and supported, so fit for beginners and 'users', not bleeding edge, expecting things to fail' type of users.

You fail to mention how that differs from what they get once the update is completed...
WHY would a newbie doing their setup, being told to do an upgrade be expecting their new unit to fail after the upgrade? Is any such warning currently provided? If you bought a new phone and, powered it up first time & did the upgrades, would you expect your phone to be bricked?

[hippy]

Beginners and nightly, not a good combination ... bad idea.

But if users download the nightlies and they end up where they would be if they download the released image and then apply the updates -- what's the difference in the end result ?

I don't know, I don't know if there's a difference or not. Perhaps someone who does know could clarify and explain what differences there are.

[picandies]

if they download the released image and then apply the updates -- what's the difference in the end result ?

finally, some common sense & reasoning! The difference, is a lot less server bandwidth needed & savings of up to 30-40 minutes during the install ...multiply that by millions of people.

[ejolson]

Beginners and nightly, not a good combination ... bad idea.

But if users download the nightlies and they end up where they would be if they download the released image and then apply the updates -- what's the difference in the end result ?

As far as I can tell the difference between downloading the old image and updating it versus downloading the nightly image is only the amount of file fragmentation on the resulting SD card.

While not such a big deal with SD cards, less fragmentation can still help if one needs to perform recovery and forensics later after a misfortune.

[picandies]

As far as I can tell the difference between downloading the old image and updating it versus downloading the nightly image is only the amount of file fragmentation on the resulting SD card.

The difference, is a lot less server bandwidth needed & savings of up to 30-40 minutes during the install ...multiply that by millions of people.

[ejolson]

As far as I can tell the difference between downloading the old image and updating it versus downloading the nightly image is only the amount of file fragmentation on the resulting SD card.

The difference, is a lot less server bandwidth needed & savings of up to 30-40 minutes during the install ...multiply that by millions of people.

Agreed. Would the ISPs go out of business if network traffic decreases?

Maybe Zoom will make up for it.

Will there be so much network traffic on Christmas Day that the update servers are overwhelmed, just like what happened a few years ago with the Play Station?

[hippy]

This appears to be pertinent to the discussion, abridged and my emphasis ...

viewtopic.php?t=111144

In order to reduce the amount of work required to get new releases out, we now have new nightly images. Although we've had nightly images for quite a while, the new images can be taken and uploaded as a stable releases with minimal additional work. This can help us get releases out more frequently, avoiding the situation where users need to get months worth of updates after installing.

That was back in the days of Wheezy and Jessie so things may have changed, but it seems, at that time, nightlies were intended to deal with the exact issue being discussed.

[LTolledo]

OS download is rather useless....

then don't...

[jamesh]

I was wrong above when I said nightlies should be regarded as beta, they are actually the release versions. Sorry for that misinformation.

Also note, that a new download image works fine, even if you don't download any updates. The whole point of having a known baseline image, you know it works. These baselines get much more testing, as a complete system, than individual updates.

There should be a new one before Xmas, so there should be no long delays whilst waiting for updates, and the servers will be fine.

[rh73]

There should be a new one before Xmas, so there should be no long delays whilst waiting for updates, and the servers will be fine.

Great to hear, as I was planning to gift one or maybe even 2x Pi 400 to my nephew and niece. (Although having to run an update after OS install seems pretty normal to me, coming from the Windows world lol. Older Windows images had to download *gigabytes* of service packs before you could consider them useful and especially secure).

[jamesh]

Not sure if Pi400 kits will have the latest image before Xmas, so you may need to update the kits SD cards.

[Selectortone]

I thought I'd give this a try, as I bought my grandson a Pi4B desktop for Christmas and he and my son will be doing this on Christmas day.

Did it all on a Pi4B running RaspiOS over (not particularly fast) wifi. I used the Pi Imager to download an image of the full RaspiOS image with recommended software onto a fresh SD card, rebooted, went through the full install and full update o the desktop and it took 38 minutes from start to finish.

Now some people might call that a long time, especially if you're one of those who sits and watches a progress bar crawl across the screen. In my experience it's not much longer than a Windows 10 update, and certainly quicker, I seem to remember, than the interminable Windows 7 updates towards the end of than OS's life. Me, I went and made a cup of tea and then did a bit of internetting on a chromebook that sits next to my pi tinkering station in the dining room.

Of course that was the full newbie experience that I myself went through a while ago when lockdown led me to searching for a new hobby and rekindled my interest in the Pi. Nowadays the applications I mess about with need RaspiOS Lite or some other light distro (PiCorePlayer, LibreELEC or whatever) which usually takes just a few minutes.

[hippy]

went through the full install and full update o the desktop and it took 38 minutes from start to finish.

Now some people might call that a long time, especially if you're one of those who sits and watches a progress bar crawl across the screen.

The time taken issue mostly affects first time users who are eager to get started and aren't aware just how long an update will take. In those cases it can be much like watching a kettle while it boils; seems to take forever.

Once one is aware of how long it takes one can skip the update and do that later or schedule the whole set-up when the time it takes doesn't really matter.

Reducing the amount updated, the time taken, is however beneficial for everyone.

[bjtheone]

Once one is aware of how long it takes one can skip the update and do that later or schedule the whole set-up when the time it takes doesn't really matter.

Reducing the amount updated, the time taken, is however beneficial for everyone.

Having been on the maintenance side of the equation, building and testing releases and ensuring all is well takes a very real amount of time and resources. Plus the more often you do it, the more likely that you will end up putting out a broken release, as you have less time of soak testing. Plus there are all the Pi's with prebuilt SD cards in the pipeline that are always going to need the update anyways. Given that every other electronic gizmo does the update dance upon commissioning, I don't see how RPT is out of step with standard practice nor is their update time substantially different.

Having said all that I would just preload any Pi I was giving as a Christmas present unless it was going to someone who would enjoy the ownership of doing it all themselves.

[picandies]

Having been on the maintenance side of the equation, building and testing releases and ensuring all is well takes a very real amount of time and resources. Plus the more often you do it, the more likely that you will end up putting out a broken release, as you have less time of soak testing.

So when the newbie family opens up their brand new pi, installs the os, waits around for the update as automated & suggested, then they are going to possibly have a broken system? That hardly seems normal or acceptable. should the update say --WARNING your new system may fail to operate properly after this step? Presently, no such warning is provided.

Having been on the maintenance side of the equation, building and testing releases and ensuring all is well takes a very real amount of time and resources.

...that needs done, regardless.

You have to look at it from the view of someone who's only experience with the pi is what has transpired during the prior 15 minutes. You tell them now system is searching for updates & will install them, ok? With no warning about potential problems, who is going to say no?