Raspberry Pi 4 Thread - general discussion

[W. H. Heydt]

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.

I think you greatly overestimate the hardware turnover in the Pi ecosystem. Pis that run and do whatever task they were set up for continue to work. New Pis (particularly Pi0 and Pi0W) that *can't* run 64-bit software continue to be deployed. The CM1 is slated to be produced for another 3 years, and that, too, is unable to run 64-bit software.

The "show stoppers" of the A-series (with the release of the Pi3A+) and CM-series (with the CM3 and CM3+) mean that there are 64-bit *options* where those boards are used.

I have gone on at length, previously, about the Pi0/Pi0W being a major reason why Raspbian can't go 64-bit (at least exclusively) and I haven't seen anything to suggest that is going to change in the foreseeable future. Or--perhaps--a 64-bit capable Pi0/Pi0W is that "secret project" that was mentioned in passing in the recent BBC article.

[Imperf3kt]

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.

[Gavinmc42]

Or--perhaps--a 64-bit capable Pi0/Pi0W is that "secret project" that was mentioned in passing in the recent BBC article.

We can only hope
$5 64bit Pi Zero+, ooh shiny, I want.

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.

scrapped fairly soon anyway as people upgrade to the Pi4.

Soon? I still have a model A that works fine, suitable to purpose.
Upgraded my PC to a Pi4 but it is overkill for most of my embedded Pi IoT uses.
I would like lower power Pi's for that, don't care it it is 32 or 64, but 64bit is the trend.

Seven Projects, my mind boggles at what they could be
Better get a bigger Pi stuff savings jar.

[HawaiianPi]

... why not different OS's?

Because it takes a lot of extra time and effort to develop and maintain multiple OS versions. There are signs that this might be changing (64-bit kernel and multiarch for Raspbian), but I believe there are significant hurdles to overcome (32-bit GPU, for example), so it's not as simple as recompiling the OS for ARM64 (ARMv8).

While this thread is about the Raspberry Pi 4, we need to remember that Raspbian is the official OS that must run on all models, including the older ones based on the 32-bit VC4 GPU (Pi 2Bv1.2, 3B and 3B+ models all have 64-bit CPU embedded in a 32-bit VC4 GPU).

And now I can hear someone shouting about having two different images. Sure, and then we can have twice as many "My Pi won't boot" threads, but do we really need more of those?

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

[Gavinmc42]

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

Just the first(best) of many alternatives, that's if they can find a champion to get them going.

Raspbian is there to support the RPF mission.
If you look at the Pi Projects page, a lot of them could not be done on Pi's, they needed PC's.
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects
The Unity project cannot be done but Blender can and FreeCAD is getting closer.

Will there ever be an Arm version of Unity on Pi's?
BlockCAD for Linux?

How many of those projects can be ported or run on Pi4 now?

[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.

[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.