Mastodawn

[object Object]Feb 28

things are going just great for raspberry pi:

- the only distro that ships the drivers for my display is raspberry pi os so fuck it, terrible it is
- I dd it to the microsd card
- I can’t kvm to the pi4 cause nothing uses microhdmi so I don’t have an adapter
- there’s no way to configure networking and SSH without imager cause all methods were removed in favor of fucking Canonicial cloud-init of all things, which they haven’t actually implemented
- my nixpkgs has a broken rpi imager

[object Object]

holy fucking shit maybe it should go without saying that I’m not asking for help and I’m especially not asking for help based on something you got from fucking ChatGPT

raspberry pi community are you ok?

Cap Ybarra Feb 28

@zzt "helping" by posting something you asked slopotron is a special kind of stupid

is it a special skill to type words into google? was this a degree of effort you feel warrants merit?

[object Object]Feb 28

@cap_ybarra I’ve seen @froztbyte call this type “help vampires” before and it fits

aburka 🫣Mar 1

@cap_ybarra @zzt I'm old enough to remember lmgtfy... the thing is back then the Internet wasn't dead yet and the first result was often the answer

probably still was a dick move to use it though

neoluddite Feb 28

@zzt @jpm They hired a UK spy cop a year or two ago and a lot of people left the community over it. Mostly the rPi community is just techno fascists and other morons now.

I love this, so I Feb 28

@neoluddite @zzt yep that’s why I’ve switched any new SBC purchases to OrangePi, but I’ve still got plenty of RPi’s I use hanging around

neoluddite Feb 28

@jpm @zzt the shiny new Pi Zero 2 Ws being permanently out of stock didn't do them any favours either

[object Object]Feb 28

@neoluddite @jpm holy shit are they still playing availability games with the zero? I remember with the first one they did that to eliminate competitors (this is Broadcom with a non-profit mask on after all)

neoluddite Feb 28

@zzt @jpm yeah, you would've thought they'd get their supply chain issues under control after... *squints* THREE YEARS! Maybe the military-industrial complex is eating most of their production?

neoluddite Feb 28

@zzt @jpm https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-zero-2-review-it-sucks/

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 Review (It Sucks)

The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 has stunning quality control issues and signs of corner cutting. They fixed almost none of the problems from the Zero W. It’s garbage.

James A. Chambers

[object Object]Feb 28

@neoluddite @jpm oooh reading this is going to improve my mood significantly

Brendan Jones Mar 1

@jpm @neoluddite @zzt I’ve recently been returning to the idea of finally setting up a pi hole with a Raspberry Pi, but this thread gives me pause. Would it be better to do it on an Orange Pi than a Raspberry Pi?

[object Object]Mar 1

@Brendanjones @jpm @neoluddite I highly recommend used x86 hardware for non-embedded computing tasks (essentially anything where you don’t need GPIOs, a specific form factor, or passive cooling).

my home file server is a Dell Optiplex 9020M USFF that I got from an enterprise surplus sale for $20. it’s currently running about 10 fairly heavy daemons and a ZFS NAS with the 8GB RAM it came with. they’re a bit more expensive now — eBay says $40, but it’ll be cheaper if it’s available locally

1/

[object Object]Mar 1

@Brendanjones @jpm @neoluddite in spite of its name, it looks like pi-hole will work fine on x86 hardware: https://docs.pi-hole.net/main/prerequisites/ from my experience, it’ll run much better on x86 than it will on the pi. it seems like Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora are officially supported.

if you go for one of the Dells I mentioned, take note of its ports and available upgrades (this is enterprise hardware so Dell’s docs are still available). if you need above gigabit Ethernet, you may need a USB adapter.

Prerequisites - Pi-hole documentation

Operating system and network requirements

I love this, so I Mar 1

@zzt @Brendanjones @neoluddite yup, ex-corporate SFF/USFF PCs work great for this kind of stuff, and I can confirm that PiHole works great on them.

The only reason you might want to use a RasPi or other SBC is if you really do need low-latency and low-jitter GPIOs for some reason (eg you’re running an industrial production line)

@zzt @Brendanjones @jpm @neoluddite Those Optiplex USFF machines are no joke. I have a couple running various tasks now and they haven't skipped a beat. The cooling system is remarkably quiet and effective for what it is.

Dare I say the Intel igpu on these is perfectly fine and dandy too

[object Object]Mar 1

@vxo @Brendanjones @jpm @neoluddite exactly! I actually have a whole ryzen+ARC desktop I built from used parts (a nightmare build for various reasons) to replace the 9020M in case I run out of resources on the machine, but it’s still chugging along reliably enough that taking it down and swapping the deployment over hasn’t made my todo list yet

the desktop’s also gonna be louder than the USFF even though it’s a box full of noctua and I’m not looking forward to that

𝙲:\𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚣𝚎𝚗> █Mar 1

@zzt @Brendanjones @jpm @neoluddite I've been on the market for a surplus USFF PC for a while now but all I see is 5 to 10 times that price on eBay (in Europe). If I had found one for 20$ I would have bought it in a heartbeat

サムエルはツナマヨおにぎりをたべます。Mar 1

@trkzn don't know what country you're in but this kind of refurbished hardware reseller is maybe what you're looking for https://www.remarkt.nl/desktops (I'm not connected to this in any way fwiw).

Refurbished PC? Koop een desktop of computer

Op zoek naar een refurbished PC? Wij leveren refurbished desktop computers direct uit voorraad! ✓ Gratis verzenden ✓ Morgen in huis

David Gerard Mar 1

@samuel @trkzn ex-corporate desktops are super cheap - 4GB RAM is unusable for desktop work in 2026 but it's awesome for a box that sits there doing stuff. i hit ebay for these things

𝙲:\𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚣𝚎𝚗> █Mar 1

@davidgerard @samuel Yeah I've been watching eBay for a while, but as I'm looking for 8 gigs machine with a mid range CPU prices tend to go higher and higher these days.

David Gerard Mar 1

@trkzn @samuel about £50 for 8gb RAM is achievable lately with rather too much digging, but yeah number is going up

David Gerard Mar 1

@trkzn @samuel check the job lots section too if you have similar sort of friendsh

(tho not a lot on offer in the UK at present for example)

𝙲:\𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚣𝚎𝚗> █Mar 1

@samuel I'm in France, thanks for the link I'll have a look.

@zzt @Brendanjones @jpm @neoluddite I've had great luck running a pihole on old laptops that have wired ethernet. So, totally agree on small power efficient x86 systems.

All our normal laptops run Linux, so they just have a local pihole install as well. Nice for travel.

CounterPillow Mar 1

@jpm orangepi sells to the Russian military, are those okay with you?

I love this, so I Mar 1

@CounterPillow distributors gonna distribute, like the UniFi distributors selling stuff to Russian military, or RasPi selling to fascist western police agencies, or… whatever, there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.

CounterPillow Mar 1

@jpm Yeah no it wasn't distributors in that case.

[object Object]Feb 28

@neoluddite @jpm buying this rpi was like pulling fucking teeth for me because of that, it’s an absolute last resort purchase I still regret

unfortunately, these fuckers have done the techfash thing and made themselves a broken ecosystem with no way out

not that most of their shit community will notice, they just want a digital picture frame that runs openclaw or whatever horseshit some rpi influencer told them they should build

I love this, so I Feb 28

@zzt @neoluddite yeah I absolutely get it. The other half of it is, RPi isn’t for hackers, it’s for industrial control systems. See who they kept selling to during 2020-2023.

[object Object]Feb 28

@jpm @neoluddite my favorite thing about the rpi is it started life as an extremely unsuccessful Broadcom set top box board

yes, that’s why it boots from the GPU and why the port layout is a fucking crime

you’d think they’d have undone any of that since then but as you said, hackers don’t use rpi, rpi uses hackers. decades of free labor and goodwill to turn a failure into a success

Kirtai 🏳️‍⚧️Feb 28

@zzt @jpm @neoluddite
I need a Pi5 to make a Zynthian and am very very angry with what's happening.

"Musty Bits" McGee Feb 28

@zzt @jpm @neoluddite run that boot GPU thing by me again??

[object Object]Feb 28

@arichtman @jpm @neoluddite https://patrickmccanna.net/the-raspberry-pi-boot-order-is-unusual/

> The Raspberry Pi uses Broadcom BCM2xxx chips where The “main” processor is a VideoCore IV/VI GPU is activated at power-on. It runs proprietary firmware that handles the boot. The BCM2xxx chips are typically used in set-top boxes for video streaming/entertainment. For these types of devices, the goal is to quickly get to a flashy user interface.

all of this is exactly as goofy as it sounds

THE BOOT ORDER OF THE RASPBERRY PI IS UNUSUAL! – blog

[object Object]Feb 28

@arichtman @jpm @neoluddite if you’ve ever wondered why some people are loud about the raspberry pi not being open source, by the way, this is most of the software end (alongside the vendor distro being riddled with proprietary crap but that comes with the territory in embedded unfortunately). the root of trust and main processor in every raspberry pi since 2012 has been proprietary and under broadcom’s exclusive control. it’s extremely hard to write anything for the GPU if you aren’t them.

crzwdjk ✅ Mar 1

@zzt @arichtman @jpm @neoluddite That last bit is not quite true, for rpi4+ there are fully open source GPU drivers developed with funding from the raspberry pi foundation and even some small cooperation from broadcom. But yeah the original scheme was that the GPU driver was an opaque blob that ran on the secondary processor and the main OS would basically just do OpenGL over RPC calls to the blob.

[object Object]Mar 1

@crzwdjk @arichtman @jpm @neoluddite unfortunately, the open source Mesa and DRM drivers haven’t changed anything about the root of trust or boot firmware I’m referring to. https://macoy.me/blog/programming/PiGPU has some good information on why; Igalia, who Broadcom hired to do the open source driver work, has a privileged position in terms of the information they can access, and have released only enough code to release and upstream their drivers specifically.

Programming a GPU on bare metal

[object Object]Mar 1

@crzwdjk @arichtman @jpm @neoluddite here’s the closest thing I can find to open source boot firmware: https://librerpi.github.io/ (it’s terribly incomplete), and note that UEFI on pi4 and 5 is still just called by the GPU, it isn’t actually boot firmware

here’s a relatively recent official position on the GPU: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=381252 don’t ask, stop being curious about your hardware, you don’t want to use the GPU for anything

The librerpi project

[object Object]Mar 1

@crzwdjk @arichtman @jpm @neoluddite for me, Broadcom and Igalia working together on Mesa and DRM drivers is almost indistinguishable from Rockchip and Collabora doing the same. it’s great to have but I won’t applaud it, because upstreaming drivers in a way that barely checks boxes is pretty standard for embedded vendors. Rockchip just doesn’t have a PR arm shaped like a nonprofit to make it look fluffier than it is, and they didn’t structure their architecture such that the GPU is in control.

crzwdjk ✅ Mar 1

@zzt On a technical and slightly pedantic point it's not the "GPU" as such that's in control, it's an embedded ARM (Cortex-M I think) secondary processor that controls the boot process. Which is not that unusual for SoCs really, the unusual thing about the Raspberry Pi is that it runs an opaque blob all the way until loading the Linux kernel and that that opaque blob keeps running even after the kernel boots, Linux AFAIK has no driver that uses the secondary processor.

@zzt @arichtman @jpm @neoluddite I just fell into the raspberry pi trap because it's the only platform where VLC's setting to display video on a specific monitor actually works.

in exchange for that feature, it starts "playing" the video before loading it, so the first two seconds are cut off.

£46 well spent!

Moses Izumi Feb 28

@zzt @jpm @neoluddite
If the Raspberry Pi company cared about hackers, they would've leaned way harder into the DIY portable electronics scene.

Imagining a world where every vaguely motivated user builds their own laptops and phones around standardized components (just like with desktops): instead of making gross compromises to get the features they want.

Jacob Alexander Tice Mar 4

I… I… I don't even have the fucking words. Just what the fuck? Even in a set top box why would the fucking GPU ever be the first thing to boot? That just doesn't make any sense at all. It's the other thing.

Man, rpi fell off. Minecraft pocket edition with scratch programming was cool when I was in primary

@zzt Did you try a rubber band? Alternately maybe you should re-mill whatever it is out of a cube of titanium?

[object Object]Mar 1

@jwz I’m fucking amazed I haven’t gotten “why didn’t you simply write open source drivers for the LCD” yet

(this project has already turned into future patches for qemu, somehow. it’s a nightstand computer inside one of those clocks shaped like a Mac 128k)