Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit Exits Lengthy Beta
February 2, 2022 marks the day that 64-bit flavor of Raspberry Pi OS moves from a rather lengthy beta, into the world at large. The news, announced via a blog post by Gordon Holingworth, Chief Product Officer at Raspberry Pi Ltd sees the 64-bit OS move to being released. But this new release isn't set to replace the 32-bit version just yet.
Originally released as a beta back in May 2020, Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit looks and feels the same as the venerable 32-bit version but under the hood we get a little more horsepower for the newer models of Raspberry Pi.
[...] At this time, there is no 64-bit support for Widevine DRM. This means that we cannot play media from sites such as Disney+ and Netflix. The current workaround, detailed in the blog post, requires us to install the 32-bit Chromium browser.
[...] We asked Hollingworth if the 32-bit OS will be phased out as more 64-bit compatible models are released? "While we manufacture hardware with 32-bit processors then we will still continue with the 32-bit recommended image. (We still make original Pi model B's because we always said we would continue to do so while it was possible)," he said.
Previously: Raspberry Pi 4 Gets 8 GB RAM Model, Also 64-bit OS and USB Boot (Both in Beta)
Raspberry Pi Raises Price for First Time, Reintroduces 1 GB Model for $35
Quad-Core Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Launched at $15
Related Stories
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a new Raspberry Pi 4 model with 8 GB of RAM:
Now, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has upped the ante by releasing a Raspberry Pi 4 B with a generous 8GB of RAM. Launching today for $75, the Raspberry Pi 4 B (8GB) is identical to other Raspberry Pi 4 B models in every way, except for its RAM capacity. So what do you do with all that memory, and is spending $20 more than the price of the $55 4GB model worth it?
The short answer is that, right now, the 8GB capacity makes the most sense for users with very specialized needs: running data-intensive server loads or using virtual machines. As our tests show, it's pretty difficult to use more than 4GB of RAM on Raspberry Pi, even if you're a heavy multitasker.
A beta version of a 64-bit Raspbian OS, which is being renamed to "Raspberry Pi OS", is available. The existing 32-bit Raspbian can use all the RAM, but with a limit of up to 3 GB per process.
Some changes have been made to the board:
The back of the board adds silkscreen for certifications, as well as existing modifications for Raspberry Pi 4 Rev 1.2 to avoid damaging the board when inserting a MicroSD card. But the top of the board has more modification around the USB-C port, USB Type-A ports, and a chip between the VLI PCIe to USB chip and AV jack is just gone. So it's possible further USB-C issues have been fixed, and some improvements have been made to USB host ports maybe with regards to powering up external hard drives.
[Update from Eben Upton about hardware changes:
These are the regulator changes I mention in the post. The disappeared chip near the USB connector is the old regulator. The new stuff near the USB-C is the new regulator. The input clamp component has moved across to the USB area to make room.
Several iterations of the Raspberry Pi 4's firmware have reduced power consumption and heat. A beta-level firmware update from earlier in the week added USB boot support.
Raspberry Pi 4 2GB gets a price hike to $45, 1GB version coming back for $35
We've been used to getting better hardware for cheaper or in the case of Raspberry Pi model B boards a stable $35 price tag since 2021 with gradual improvements to the hardware. Many companies already had to hike prices for their board due to supply constraints, and Raspberry Pi Trading has become the latest victim of the increase in components with the Raspberry Pi 4 with 2GB RAM going back to its original $45 price tag, and the re-introduction of the Raspberry Pi 4 1GB for $35. We are told this is temporary, and once everything settles the Raspberry Pi 4 2GB should sell for $35 as was the case since last year. This is the very first price hike in Raspberry Pi (short) history.
[...] Eben Upton explains the Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi 400, and Compute Module 4 will not be as badly impacted as earlier products based on a 40nm manufacturing process. That means they'll have to make some tough choices notably prioritizing Compute Module 3, Compute Module 3+, and Raspberry Pi 3B, at the cost of the Raspberry Pi 3B+ which will fall at the back of the queue mostly to cater to the needs of industrial customers. People still using Raspberry Pi 3B+ in their design are recommended to switch to Raspberry Pi 4 with 1GB RAM.
Also at The Register.
Previously: 2 GB Model of Raspberry Pi 4 Gets Permanent Price Cut to $35
New product: Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W on sale now at $15
Priced at $15, Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W uses the same Broadcom BCM2710A1 SoC die as the launch version of Raspberry Pi 3, with Arm cores slightly down-clocked to 1GHz, bundled into a single space-saving package alongside 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM. The exact performance uplift over Zero varies across workloads, but for multi-threaded sysbench it is almost exactly five times faster.
[...] Next to the large RP3A0 package, you'll find a large metal shield can, which covers the wireless circuitry on the board and protects it from external interference. Like all Raspberry Pi products since 3B+, Zero 2 W has FCC modular certification, which reduces the compliance workload involved in incorporating it into an end product.
The VideoCore IV GPU is unchanged, as is the 512 MB RAM capacity of the original Zero. The wireless chipset may be improved slightly from its new design, and Bluetooth 4.2 is supported. A 5V/2.5A power supply is recommended.
Also at CNX Software and The Register.
Related: Radxa Zero: Raspberry Pi Zero W on Steroids
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @10:38AM (6 children)
Is this just a rebranded linux, or did they actually make a new OS for raspi?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @11:12AM (2 children)
It's just yet another Debian distro with a few licensed proprietary packages such as Mathematica thrown in.
Originally it was important to support the ancient ARMv6 architecture with a piddling amount of RAM of the original RPi.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @04:52PM (1 child)
Now it's important to support the crap Broadcom GPU.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Friday February 04 2022, @10:41PM
Well, yes. And not necessarily for the reason many people think (Graphics). The GPU is actually the master boot processor, and the RPi requires a proprietary binary blog firmware to boot at all. From a FLOSS point of view, it's not ideal, as it normalises the use of non-FLOSS software.
The boot firmware is pretty opaque. Some effort has gone into reverse engineering it, with little to show so far.
https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-bootloader-firmware-updating-recovery-guide/ [jamesachambers.com]
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?p=1383954 [raspberrypi.com]
https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/blob/master/firmware/release-notes.md [github.com]
https://github.com/nstarke/raspberrypi4-bootloader-analysis [github.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Ingar on Friday February 04 2022, @11:20AM (2 children)
Raspberry Pi OS (formerly known as Raspbian) is a debian derivate.
As I understand, the intention is to get all the necessary patches merged upstream
and switch to vanilla debian-aarch64.
Understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @11:42PM (1 child)
Raspbian site still exists and says nothing about a rename. https://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianAbout [raspbian.org]
So I wondered why no redirects or info about the new name, or why https://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage [raspbian.org] says they are not affiliated to the foundation... after a small search found the backstory: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/602587/why-has-raspbian-apparently-been-renamed-into-raspberry-pi-os/602658 [stackexchange.com]
TL;DR: Raspbian was born to optimize packages, as original hardware was no enough for one Debian arch (armhf) and wasted with another (armel), like having a 586 processor but having to pick between 686 or 386 distros in plain PC land (fails vs new features go unused). The foundation took the orginal project output and created images, evolving them as new hardware was launched. When the Raspbian project said they would prefer not to give the name if they were not the creators of the OS, the foundation agreed and renamed the distro to avoid any other confusion.
To sum up: Raspbian still exists, and foundation has own OS with other name.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Saturday February 05 2022, @03:07AM
That's not quite what I got from your stackexchange link
A couple key details:
There were two projects both using the Raspbian name
- the original Raspbian project, which is all about optimizing stuff for the Pi's weird CPU niche
- the derivative version the Raspberry Pi Foundation distributed, which had a bunch of changes included. This is the one that was renamed to RpiOS.
With the shift to 64-bit, it sounds like RpiOS is cutting its roots with the Raspbian project. And when they approached the Rasbian guy about the name, he told them he'd prefer if they used something different. And so they did.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Revek on Friday February 04 2022, @01:56PM (2 children)
Wait, all sold out. A 4gb then, all sold out. A 2gb, all sold out. Surly I can find a 3b or b+. Nope, all sold out. I've been trying for three weeks to find one priced normally. The only thing I've found are some pi 400's, which really don't don't fit.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @02:50PM
Yep, I pre-ordered a Pi 4 8GB a few weeks ago, and I won't get that until the end of March. I think it's safe to say that everybody is tired of the pandemic at this point, but apparently, we're going to continue all the restrictions indefnitely.
That being said, I'm definitely looking forward to getting my hands on one. I've been pretty happy with my previous Pis, so this one should be even better.
(Score: 3, Informative) by stretch611 on Friday February 04 2022, @07:01PM
Yes, I noticed this too. I even mentioned here on SN a few weeks ago: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=47064&cid=1211635 [soylentnews.org]
My guess at the time was wrong though. Since that post, I found a news story on availability on the Raspberry pi website: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-shortages-and-our-first-ever-price-increase/ [raspberrypi.com]
Essentially the global chip shortage has affected their production. I have not seen many normal priced raspberry pi's other than a few Raspberry Pi Zero 2 Ws which was just released a few months ago. They also raised the price of the Pi 4B/2GB back to the initial price of $45 and returned the Pi 4B/1GB to normal production. All this will last for the duration of the global supply chain issues.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @04:30PM (1 child)
NetBSD-9 RPi/aarch64 managed that about 5 years ago?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @06:18PM
As the summary alludes to, its not the FOSS software that's the problem. The default raspberry pi os image contains a lot of stuff not from debian - a weird Pi version of minecraft, several versions of the Scratch language/IDE and other sutff like widevine that they need someone else to support on 64 bit.
So after a few years of beta, maybe they've finally gotten all that stuff recompiled. Though not widevine ...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @06:52PM (1 child)
First thing I do after installing the OS is run -
apt-get remove --purge google*
apt-get remove --purge chromium-browser*
Fortunately, I don't watch Netflix.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 05 2022, @12:35AM
install distros that just don't come with tons of crap, like aarch64 Void Linux. used to use Exherbo and distcc for my Pi but that got tiresome.