Raspberry Pi 4 Thread - general discussion

[PeterO]

If I recall*, one of the engineers actually commented on that "secret project" and corrected the media, stating that it was more like seven projects.

* my mind is known to be prone to bit corruption and read errors.

I wouldn't take that comment too seriously.

Even if it's true (if), it could be... Peripherials, helping somebody design stuff around a CM, that one project that never went anywhere, SW stuff, and so on an so forth.

Bear in mind that (as far as I can rememberer) all (*) the PI products have been secret right up until launch day !
PeterO

(*) Except the first one that is....

[rpdom]

Bear in mind that (as far as I can rememberer) all (*) the PI products have been secret right up until launch day !

Well, there was the touchscreen and the first camera, I believe. But the screen was delayed by a fair while which is one of the reasons why they now don't announce things before they are ready.

[Technocolour]

If I recall*, one of the engineers actually commented on that "secret project" and corrected the media, stating that it was more like seven projects.

* my mind is known to be prone to bit corruption and read errors.

I wouldn't take that comment too seriously.

Even if it's true (if), it could be... Peripherials, helping somebody design stuff around a CM, that one project that never went anywhere, SW stuff, and so on an so forth.

Bear in mind that (as far as I can rememberer) all (*) the PI products have been secret right up until launch day !
PeterO

(*) Except the first one that is....

Oh absolutely.

But a comment about seven secret projects isn't the same thing as there being seven projects or that they all involve new Pi designs.

Not that I have any insight or that I feel that seven new Pi's would be a bad thing. But it's good to temper ones expectations before the speculations gain a life of their own.

[hippy]

Since the Pi4 hardware is different, I don't see the point in maintaining backward compatibility with units that will surely be scrapped fairly soon anyway as people upgrade to the Pi4.

There are millions of more Pi's out there which are not Pi 4's than are, and many millions which cannot use 64-bit. And I would expect most don't get junked or land-filled as new Pi's arrive but continue to be used or pass into other hands.

Older Pi's are still perfectly usable and there's no compelling need to upgrade in many cases. Many have a long useful life ahead of them.

The need to support 32-bit will continue for a good while yet unless the RPT/RPF are prepared to simply drop support for their legacy customers and face the inevitable backlash which will come with that - which they sensibly don't appear to want to do.

There may come a time when Pi is 64-bit only, when 32-bit Pi's becomes historical artefacts, display piece novelties, or have made their way onto a mountain of recyclables, but I don't expect that to be any time soon.

[hippy]

Seriously, why expect 32 bit single cores to do the same job as 4 core 64bit SoC PCBs.
Different capabilities, why not different OS's?
The Pi ecosystem has expanded, many versions now, pick your SoC, then PCB format, then a suitable OS.

Because it's easier, or felt desirable or advantageous by most people, to have the same OS on everything they have - or the differences to be so concealed as to appear to be the same - than having to use something which is even slightly different.

For me that extended to wanting a Buster version of the Raspberry Pi Desktop OS for PC and Mac once Raspbian had moved on from Stretch.

It's what drives some to wanting Windows 10 on a Pi.

Most people don't like using things which differ, want familiarity without having to think about what it is they are using and having to adjust to that.

[ejolson]

At least we have options now (Sakaki's Gentoo, for example, which is probably what Gavinmc42 was alluding to).

In my experience, support for that Gentoo distribution on this forum has been quicker, more meaningful and generally better that for any other operating system I've ever used. At the same time, this is due to one individual who could at any moment get a job with Google or move on to other things. As it is widely accepted that Google has very rigorous hiring requirements, the above is meant as a comment on how well-qualified the person running the Gentoo-on-Pi project is, rather than a prediction of whether that project will continue and for how long.

At any rate, I agree with observation that the introduction of the 4B represents a significant change in hardware capability. Historically, many people ran MSDOS on 486 computers which could better have run Linux. In my opinion, running a 32-bit operating system on 64-bit hardware is much less ridiculous than running a 16-bit OS on a 32-bit computer.

[jamesh]

The need to support 32-bit will continue for a good while yet unless the RPT/RPF are prepared to simply drop support for their legacy customers and face the inevitable backlash which will come with that - which they sensibly don't appear to want to do.

We won't be dropping support for legacy customers.

You would not believe the pain we put ourselves through to ensure as much backwards compatibility as possible. Occasionally we cannot do it as much as we would like - the new graphics driver for example works best on Pi4 - but we have retained legacy graphics mode just to be sure, and we frequently make changes in that even now.

[RossDv8]

Retro-Pi project specifically for all the 'retro' Pis out there?

[Heater]

MikeDB,

...compatibility with units that will surely be scrapped fairly soon anyway as people upgrade to the Pi4...

Whoa, what?

None of my Pi are going in the landfill unless they actually die. They will continue to do what they do, there is no need to upgrade them, having a new model come out does not stop them working as well as they ever did.

Besides, Pi are not just electronic junk, like phones, TVs laptops, etc, that we all use for a fleeting moment as they make their way from the mines to the landfill. That essentially become useless as time moves on (I recently had to buy a new smart phone only because my bank's authentication app does not work on old Android and their is no upgrade possible, grrr....)

[alphanumeric]

I buy the new model Pi and repurpose the older one it replaced. All my Pi trickle down the chain of use. Thats usually how it goes for the ones I use daily. I have two A+'s in use here, one runs 24/7 and has been for years. I don't need a more powerful Pi to do what it does. The other A+ see's hours of daily use. Any Pi I actually don't need or want gets given away to a somebody to enjoy. I've only ever had one failure that went to be recycled. And that was my doing not the Pi's fault.

[rpdom]

All of my Pis are still running their original tasks and performing well. The only one I might upgrade is a Pi 2B that is running multiple server tasks (database, local website etc) that I was going to move to a Pi 3B+ but may now become a 4B.

The rest will stay, including the 1B that performs important functions in the house and the 1A that has been monitoring the outside temperature for years now.

[maxipower]

The need to support 32-bit will continue for a good while yet unless the RPT/RPF are prepared to simply drop support for their legacy customers and face the inevitable backlash which will come with that - which they sensibly don't appear to want to do.

We won't be dropping support for legacy customers.

You would not believe the pain we put ourselves through to ensure as much backwards compatibility as possible. Occasionally we cannot do it as much as we would like - the new graphics driver for example works best on Pi4 - but we have retained legacy graphics mode just to be sure, and we frequently make changes in that even now.

Does this mean that RPi4 will be limited in driver evolution because of previous versions, so it is not worth betting on it for media player with Libreelec?

[Heater]

No.

We read around this forum that Pi video drivers/firmware are being improved all the time.

We also read that despite the work that goes into "legacy" support there is also work going on with a 64 bit kernel and so on.

[hippy]

Does this mean that RPi4 will be limited in driver evolution because of previous versions

No; it means older Pi's may end up not being as capable as the most recent Pi's but those older Pi's won't be abandoned nor their users

[maxipower]

Ok, I asked why, due to the fact that i see in the Libreelec forum, RPi4 continues with the old kernel.

[6by9]

Ok, I asked why, due to the fact that i see in the Libreelec forum, RPi4 continues with the old kernel.

There have been some issues with 5.4 and V3D (Pi4 graphics). Those are now resolved, so I believe they are now at least testing on 5.4.

[DougieLawson]

Does this mean that RPi4 will be limited in driver evolution because of previous versions, so it is not worth betting on it for media player with Libreelec?

What on earth brings you to that conclusion?

Raspbian includes all sorts of bells and whistles for the RPi4 but also includes extremely good support for everything from the 2012 RPi1B onwards. The Raspberry Pi level of backward compatibility appears to be based on the IBM S/360 model (you can run a 1967 S/360 program on a 2019 IBM z15 processor - I was looking at S/370 COBOL code written in 1972 last month). That's a very hard thing to do while developing new hardware and new software and a credit to the whole team at RPF/RPTL.

If your complaint is, specifically, about LibreElec? Have you tried OSMC? Or even Kodi under Raspbian? It's not hard to change the SDCard and with that boot an entirely different operating system.

[maxipower]

Ok, I asked why, due to the fact that i see in the Libreelec forum, RPi4 continues with the old kernel.

There have been some issues with 5.4 and V3D (Pi4 graphics). Those are now resolved, so I believe they are now at least testing on 5.4.

Good news, thanks.

[maxipower]

Does this mean that RPi4 will be limited in driver evolution because of previous versions, so it is not worth betting on it for media player with Libreelec?

What on earth brings you to that conclusion?

Raspbian includes all sorts of bells and whistles for the RPi4 but also includes extremely good support for everything from the 2012 RPi1B onwards. The Raspberry Pi level of backward compatibility appears to be based on the IBM S/360 model (you can run a 1967 S/360 program on a 2019 IBM z15 processor - I was looking at S/370 COBOL code written in 1972 last month). That's a very hard thing to do while developing new hardware and new software and a credit to the whole team at RPF/RPTL.

If your complaint is, specifically, about LibreElec? Have you tried OSMC? Or even Kodi under Raspbian? It's not hard to change the SDCard and with that boot an entirely different operating system.

I'm new here, I bought RPi4 to replace an old Htpc and I thought it was more developed with regard to Kodi, just my ignorance, I'm not criticizing anything.
Yes, I already tested Kodi under Raspbian.

[fruitoftheloom]

Does this mean that RPi4 will be limited in driver evolution because of previous versions, so it is not worth betting on it for media player with Libreelec?

What on earth brings you to that conclusion?

Raspbian includes all sorts of bells and whistles for the RPi4 but also includes extremely good support for everything from the 2012 RPi1B onwards. The Raspberry Pi level of backward compatibility appears to be based on the IBM S/360 model (you can run a 1967 S/360 program on a 2019 IBM z15 processor - I was looking at S/370 COBOL code written in 1972 last month). That's a very hard thing to do while developing new hardware and new software and a credit to the whole team at RPF/RPTL.

If your complaint is, specifically, about LibreElec? Have you tried OSMC? Or even Kodi under Raspbian? It's not hard to change the SDCard and with that boot an entirely different operating system.

I'm new here, I bought RPi4 to replace an old Htpc and I thought it was more developed with regard to Kodi, just my ignorance, I'm not criticizing anything.
Yes, I already tested Kodi under Raspbian.

LibreElec appears to be the best choice for Kodi:

https://libreelec.tv/category/news/

[bjtheone]

I'm new here, I bought RPi4 to replace an old Htpc and I thought it was more developed with regard to Kodi, just my ignorance, I'm not criticizing anything.
Yes, I already tested Kodi under Raspbian.

Not sure what you mean by "more developed with regard to Kodi". The Pi certainly was not created for or had Kodi as its main target. However, given that it is a surprisingly powerful, and very very well support SBC running a mainstream Linux distro, it is very popular with media center developers (which is why it is well supported by OSMC, LibreELEC, and Kodi itself).

Like Jamesh mentioned, the Pi 4 has new GPU and hence a new graphics driver. On the upside, better performance. On the downside, not exactly the same as the old one, which caused some issues with Kodi and distros built around Kodi. LibreElec just released 9.2 (Leica), with better support for the Pi 4. Always going to be a lag between new hardware and support of distros built on top of it. The tighter the distro is coupled to the hardware the more likely there will be issues at launch. Raspbian Buster (RPT's version of Debian Buster) worked very well out of the gate with the release of the Pi 4. Kodi has played movies fine when run as a program under Raspbian for months.

[RossDv8]

Kodi has played movies fine when run as a program under Raspbian for months.

So fne that I often use it then forget I can't pause a video and switch to windowed mode to check email, then switch back. There used to be a simple toggle in Kodi, like \ or / or something, but I can't find any reference to it.
If it wasn't so nice to use on Raspbian I would like to just forget it is there, but the current 18.4 Kodi is excellent on my Pi 4.

[takyon]

I think the main problem I had with Kodi on Raspbian was that I had to crash it to exit sometimes. Otherwise it worked pretty well. LibreELEC 9.2.0 is also working quite well.

Can we start a Raspberry Pi 5 wishlist thread in this forum on Xmas? Hueehhehheheheh eheh.

[W. H. Heydt]

Can we start a Raspberry Pi 5 wishlist thread in this forum on Xmas? Hueehhehheheheh eheh.

Depends... How do you feel about pink ponies and rainbow unicorns?

Seriously...I'm not what features one could improve. I *suppose* either a faster PCIe lane, or a second one, would be welcome, but I'm not at all sure it's actually needed. Fixing the USB-C power connection is minor and wouldn't need to go to Pi5. Other features--RTC, SATA, etc.--have the same problems they've always had: lack of board space and too narrow a user base.

One feature I would like to see in the future is a fan header. No idea where to put it, but if the thermal issues continue (as is moderately likely), it would be a real plus not to have to tie up the GPIO header 5v lines for a fan.

[alphanumeric]

What I'd like to see is a no GPIO header installed version of the Pi 4, like the PI Zero without header. That would let you mount a Hat etc underneath it instead of on top of it. Put a female header on the back side of the Pi instead of a male on top. Or us a stacking header and do both, POE hat on top and a hat underneath the Pi for instance. Make it optional.