Raspberry Pi OS has been through a big update recently, which fans of the little devices need to be aware of for future setups and upgrades.
First, in the name of security, the default "pi" user is no more. Why? Well, attacks are on the rise, and since the RPi is incredibly popular, it is obviously a target. Removing the default name is just another small barrier that anyone doing something naughty has to overcome, as they might now need your username directly too. That, and new legislation from some countries that forbid having default login info. Seems like a sane change regardless, so their install wizard (that's now required to use) was upgraded to create a proper user account.
On top of that, hassles of Bluetooth during setup should be a thing of the past. Now, it will tell you to set your devices into pairing mode and sync them up.
As for the future: say hello to Wayland. Everywhere it is beginning to replace X and the Raspberry Pi OS has been making preparations on that front too. They switched to mutter to help with this, and now you can also test out a very experimental version of RPi OS on Wayland (but they don't recommend it yet), with many features not yet hooked up fully or at all. Plenty of it is also running under XWayland, so it's not a "pure" Wayland implementation of the desktop.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: PenglingQuoting: Liam DaweMy desktop machine is a Raspberry Pi 4 a
How usable is this with browser Stuff, youtube other video portals and how is the boot time or did you
hook up a usb disk ?
Quoting: mt7479How usable is this with browser Stuff, youtube other video portals and how is the boot time or did youI'll preface this by noting that, for a geek, I have surprisingly light daily computing requirements that (internet stuff aside) haven't changed much since my days with the Commodore 64. Word-processing, image-editing, web-browsing, listening to music (usually via YouTube; I don't know about other video sites, as it just hasn't come up), that sort of thing - an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 is overkill for that, so I'd never use a more powerful machine at my desk anymore because it's wasteful. (The gaming machine in my profile is a GPD Win Max 2021 running Xubuntu, which doubles as my laptop. Portable gaming is my thing, not desk-based gaming.)
hook up a usb disk ?
That said, I just use Class 10 SanDisk microSD Cards with the RPi4 (just 32GB ones due to price and availability - nothing fancy), and I find it perfectly usable, with pretty fast boot-times, though I usually just leave it on since it's so stable and uses a small amount of electricity. I've been very impressed by what it offers for the price, though your mileage may vary. For expanded storage, I just hook up a USB hard-drive when I need it; The speed benefits of SSDs are sometimes a bit lost on someone who grew up with having to wait for data to load in from cassette-tapes, so I don't need any of those yet.
Also, as mirv notes above, the power-savings are notable. If you've got no need for a super-powerful day-to-day machine for standard practical computing tasks, I would recommend looking into it - they have enough demand for it that they now offer a 1980s-inspired all-in-the-keyboard unit in addition to the traditional bare PCB versions.
Quoting: mt7479they now offer a 1980s-inspired all-in-the-keyboard unit in addition to the traditional bare PCB versions.
Yeah, the Raspberry Pi 400 is great for people who just want to use a PC for light tasks. The only thing I'd like for it to have is 8GB. Currently it's only available with 4GB RAM, which is enough for a lot of things, but might not be enough if one expects to have multiple tabs with facebook, YouTube, etc open over the course of hours. Those sites, especially facebook, are bloated and they use more and more RAM in time. To keep this under control, I have my Task Manager (Shift+Esc) open and sorted by Memory footprint. That way I can easily catch the tabs that hog RAM, and take action. :)
Quoting: mt7479they now offer a 1980s-inspired all-in-the-keyboard unit in addition to the traditional bare PCB versions.
Thanks to both of your for taking the time to reply :-) The commodore style is just adorable. 4GB Ram is really
a concern, i'm not really much into social media stuff but like to keep a few tabs always running.
A version with 8 Gig ram would really be rad. If prices settle and I can find one I might give it a try either
way. Probably going to install the OS on a USB drive though.
Last edited by mt7479 on 3 May 2022 at 1:16 pm UTC
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