Raspberry Pi OS "Bullseye" is getting some changes to improve its robustness. Gone is the default user 'pi' with the default password of 'raspberry'. On first-boot, a setup wizard walks through setting a normal user with a regular password, though there are still options for headless installation. Among other improvements, it is now also possible to do the setup with a bluetooth mouse/keyboard exclusively. The old way required at least a wired mouse, if not also a wired keyboard, to connect first.
There are also mechanisms to preconfigure an image without using Imager. To set up a user on first boot and bypass the wizard completely, create a file called userconf or userconf.txt in the boot partition of the SD card; this is the part of the SD card which can be seen when it is mounted in a Windows or MacOS computer. This file should contain a single line of text, consisting of username:encrypted- password – so your desired username, followed immediately by a colon, followed immediately by an encrypted representation of the password you want to use.
Since it is a full general-purpose computer, other distros and even other operating systems are available for the Raspberry Pi. Slackware, LInux Mint, and Devuan are all among the distros which run well. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD also support at least some Raspberry Pi models. However, the official guides and tutorials all point to Raspberry Pi OS, which is a Debian derivative.
Previously:
(2022)
Long Interview with Eben Upton About Long Term Plans for RPi (journal entry)
(2022) Can't Get Hold of a Shiny New Raspberry Pi? Blame the Bots
(2022) Raspberry Pi 64-bit Armbian Gets New Release
(2021) Raspberry Pi Launches .com Website, Eyes Retail Expansion in Africa
(2021) The Ongoing Raspberry Pi Fiasco
Related Stories
Developer Gavin L Rebeiro has posted[*see note below] a five-part article series at Techrights on how to deal with the ongoing Raspberry Pi fiasco by salvaging existing hardware with a replacement operating system.
- Part I: Acknowledgements
- Part II: Introduction
- Part III: Fundamentals
- Part IV: Doing The Task
- Part V: All The Rest
He covers the background, the technical principles, some methods for mitigation, proposes using NetBSD in place of the GNU/Linux, Raspberry Pi OS. Finally, he walks through installation of NetBSD.
Raspberry Pi Launches New Website For Its Hardware
In a surprise move, Raspberry Pi today announced that a new website has been created to support Raspberry Pi devices, sales and documentation. This marks a change from a single website from 2011 which served both educational outreach and sales. Another change is Raspberry Pi's social media presence, with the original Raspberry Pi twitter account focusing on the hardware, and another representing the charity and educational outreach of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Raspberry Pi Trading and the Raspberry Pi Foundation have long been separate entities. Raspberry Pi Trading is responsible for the hardware engineering and sales of Raspberry Pi while Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity that provides educational outreach such as learning resources and teacher outreach program "Picademy".
In two blog posts, one written by Liz Upton, executive director of communications for Raspberry Pi Trading, and another from Philip Colligan chief executive of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, we learn that the division is a necessary step as the user base grows and their requirements change. The new raspberrypi.com website aims to serve those interested in the Raspberry Pi hardware and software and provides documentation and links to resellers offering official Raspberry Pi boards and accessories.
Some posts from the RaspberryPi.org blog have been transferred to the RaspberryPi.com news page. The former blog focuses on the education mission while the news page has the project ideas, magazines, product announcements, and other news.
Raspberry Pi said yesterday it would be pushing to get its miniature computers into more shops across Africa, admitting that its presence on the continent was limited to a single approved reseller with commercial ops in a few countries in southern Africa.
Writing on the company blog, Ken Okolo said he had been recently appointed to focus on building a network of resellers and partnerships across industry and the education sector in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Uganda.
Previously Raspberry Pi was available through a South African reseller with "some commercial operations" in nearby countries, but the rest of the continent was vastly underserved, relying on e-commerce sites like Amazon and [Alibaba], and their high shipping rates, to dispatch the product from other parts of the globe.
According to Okolo, this burden "undermines [the] goal of ensuring affordability and availability across the continent."
Previously: Raspberry Pi Attracts $45m After Lockdowns Fuel Demand for PCs
Raspberry Pi 64-bit Armbian Gets New Release:
Armbian, a community-run Linux distro that supports over 100 Arm- and X86-based SBCs, has announced a new version, 22.02, and there's an optimized image ready to be installed on your Raspberry Pi.
Armbian takes a 'mainline first' approach to Linux, attempting to unify the experience across many different boards, each of them optimized for at a kernel or userspace level to maintain performance. Images are based on either Debian or Ubuntu, and use mostly vanilla upstream package repos, as most of the work has gone into kernel optimization.
The new release is the first to support UEFI on both Arm and X86 using GRUB, so it can boot on Intel Macs, and along with the hundreds of bug fixes you'd expect from a new version, there's a new Extensions build framework that allows users to extend the build system independently from the core code base, with over 20 hooks available.
Can't get hold of a shiny new Raspberry Pi? Here's why:
Adafruit, an official reseller of Raspberry Pi computers, has mandated account verification and two-factor authentication in an effort to prevent bots from snapping up limited supply.
In a blog post, Adafruit explained it hopes to give customers the opportunity to purchase Raspberry Pis and other in-demand items at the going market rate, without having to compete with automated bots for stock.
"Please note! We are now requiring a verified account with two-factor authentication enabled in order to purchase certain high-demand products, such as Raspberry Pi computers, due to a large number of bot-purchasers making it difficult for Makers and Engineers to order these products," reads a notice on Adafruit product listings.
"Please make sure you have a verified Adafruit account and enable two-factor authentication. Finally, you will need to sign out and back in to activate the account verification."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 10 2022, @09:16PM
But has it got MAGAots in its eye? Can't buy any Raspberries, anymore, so doesn't really matter.
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Sunday April 10 2022, @11:03PM (5 children)
Good luck with that with the piece of junk Pi 4 I have, with a wired keyboard connected it will not start up. I have been running Bullseye since the day Debian released it, saves a good 10C in temperature compared to their junk OS.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 11 2022, @01:15AM (1 child)
Or just enable ssh while you're at it. I haven't had any issues yet, even 1tb of zfs has been running fine. The only issue is kernel mods not wanting to install to the boot partition.
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Monday April 11 2022, @03:47AM
"Or just enable ssh while you're at it."
Oh yeah that is what I did both with their OS and Debian. Never even noticed the keyboard thing until one day I decided to check out the desktop so hooked up keyboard next time I rebooted it dies on the USB detection for that device. Plug it in afterward it works fine, the piece of junk. Oh well you get what you pay for at least I got it dirt cheap, before the parasite speculators got involved and drive the prices through the roof..
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday April 11 2022, @08:11AM (2 children)
What can possibly cause such a big difference in temperature? Have you inspected enabled services/run-time load? I do use the RaspPi Foundation images and would switch if they are really that inferior.
(Score: 4, Informative) by coolgopher on Monday April 11 2022, @08:31AM
They might be defaulting to the "performance" CPU scaling governor, as opposed to something more balanced (e.g. "ondemand")?
And of course, Raspbian does use systemd... ;)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RedGreen on Monday April 11 2022, @02:55PM
"What can possibly cause such a big difference in temperature?"
I would think the unused graphics being loaded, it just sitting at a login screen gives you the extra 10C. Who knows how much more when in use I never really checked that I only logged into it the one time. I just noticed the difference in the shell when checking the temperatures when using both OSs the Debian never having a desktop installed, the PiOS sitting at login screen with me logged into the shell via ssh. Here is what it sits at now after that stupid little fan in the CANAKIT case died with only the heat sinks on it.
root@bullseye-raspi:~# volts_clock_temp.sh
arm_freq=1500
core_freq=500
core_freq_min=200
gpu_freq=500
gpu_freq_min=250
over_voltage_avs=-20000
arm: frequency(48)=1300324224
core: frequency(1)=500000992
h264: frequency(28)=0
isp: frequency(45)=0
v3d: frequency(46)=250000496
core: volt=0.8600V
sdram_c: volt=1.1000V
sdram_i: volt=1.1000V
sdram_p: volt=1.1000V
temp=55.5'C
throttled=0x0
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 10 2022, @11:38PM
Are there any implications for the move to Wayland or is desktop performance still bad?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 11 2022, @08:36PM (1 child)
Dump the "I'm pretending I'm not root by sticking 'sudo' in front of commands".
Create a secure root passphrase: sudo passwd root
Edit /etc/sudoers to disallow 'pi' from effectively being 'root'
Now, administrative tasks and security related modifications can only be done by root.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RedGreen on Monday April 11 2022, @10:06PM
"Dump the "I'm pretending I'm not root by sticking 'sudo' in front of commands".
Now, administrative tasks and security related modifications can only be done by root."
Indeed that is the first thing I do with them sudo using OSs, nobody is ever going to convince me that one password is more secure than having to crack two to take over the machine.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen