A Happy New Year to all.

My usual PC has been giving me one problem after another over the last
few days. BIOS setup problems. had to reinstall Windows 10. one of
the distros I was looking at installed its bootloader on the second HD
instead of the first, causing all kinds of confusion. As soon as I put
the covers back on, it thought up a new fault. The latest is that
something triggers a repeated line of figures every so often,
independently of the OS.

With so little achieved, I am considering using the Pi 400 exclusively.
It won't run Windows, but that is about its only limitation. My Pi 3B
is now sitting on my desk, headless, running BOINC. There is a bug in
BOINC that even the developers can't fix, so putting it on its own
machine isolates it and prevents it from slowing everything down to a crawl.

On Sun, 02 Jan 2022 11:18:18 -0500, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@hotkey.net.au> wrote:

> A Happy New Year to all.
>
> My usual PC has been giving me one problem after another over the last
> few days. BIOS setup problems. had to reinstall Windows 10. one of
> the distros I was looking at installed its bootloader on the second HD
> instead of the first, causing all kinds of confusion. As soon as I put
> the covers back on, it thought up a new fault. The latest is that
> something triggers a repeated line of figures every so often,
> independently of the OS.
>
> With so little achieved, I am considering using the Pi 400 exclusively.
> It won't run Windows, but that is about its only limitation. My Pi 3B
> is now sitting on my desk, headless, running BOINC. There is a bug in
> BOINC that even the developers can't fix, so putting it on its own
> machine isolates it and prevents it from slowing everything down to a crawl.

I have an rpi 4b running Mageia 8 with http://mirrors.kernel.org/mageia/distrib/8/aarch64/install/images/Mageia-8-rpi-aarch64-plasma5.img.gz
extracted to an sdcard.

It works better than I expected in terms of cpu capacity. The sdcard is slow for
disk intensive operations. The rpi 4b does not have a real time clock, so the
time at startup is wrong and requires a workaround to get the time correct before
the desktop starts. Sound over hdmi is not working. The sound over hdmi does work
using Raspberry Pi OS, so it's not a hardware problem. There is some software such
as virtualbox that is not available for the aarch64 architecture.

With the kde plasma desktop running gkrellm, konversation, konsole, and some
widgets ...
$ free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3831 1050 1195 32 1584 2559
Swap: 6696 0 6696

I like it for a second system, but not for my primary system due to the sound
problem.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

Hello Doug!

Sunday January 02 2022 16:18, Doug Laidlaw wrote to All:

> A Happy New Year to all.

Same to your self.

> My usual PC has been giving me one problem after another over the last
> few days. BIOS setup problems. had to reinstall Windows 10. one
> of the distros I was looking at installed its bootloader on the second
> HD instead of the first, causing all kinds of confusion. As soon as I
> put the covers back on, it thought up a new fault. The latest is that
> something triggers a repeated line of figures every so often,
> independently of the OS.

> With so little achieved, I am considering using the Pi 400
> exclusively. It won't run Windows, but that is about its only
> limitation. My Pi 3B is now sitting on my desk, headless, running
> BOINC. There is a bug in BOINC that even the developers can't fix, so
> putting it on its own machine isolates it and prevents it from slowing
> everything down to a crawl.

The Pi WILL run Windows you just have to get the correct ARM version.

Vincent

On 3/1/22 06:31, David W. Hodgins wrote:
> On Sun, 02 Jan 2022 11:18:18 -0500, Doug Laidlaw
> <laidlaws@hotkey.net.au> wrote:
>
>> A Happy New Year to all.
>>
>> My usual PC has been giving me one problem after another over the last
>> few days.  BIOS setup problems.   had to reinstall Windows 10.  one of
>> the distros I was looking at installed its bootloader on the second HD
>> instead of the first, causing all kinds of confusion.  As soon as I put
>> the covers back on, it thought up a new fault.  The latest is that
>> something triggers a repeated line of figures every so often,
>> independently of the OS.
>>
>> With so little achieved, I am considering using the Pi 400 exclusively.
>> It won't run Windows, but that is about its only limitation.  My Pi 3B
>> is now sitting on my desk, headless, running BOINC.  There is a bug in
>> BOINC that even the developers can't fix, so putting it on its own
>> machine isolates it and prevents it from slowing everything down to a
>> crawl.
>
> I have an rpi 4b running Mageia 8 with
> http://mirrors.kernel.org/mageia/distrib/8/aarch64/install/images/Mageia-8-rpi-aarch64-plasma5.img.gz
>
> extracted to an sdcard.
>
> It works better than I expected in terms of cpu capacity. The sdcard is
> slow for
> disk intensive operations. The rpi 4b does not have a real time clock,
> so the
> time at startup is wrong and requires a workaround to get the time
> correct before
> the desktop starts. Sound over hdmi is not working. The sound over hdmi
> does work
> using Raspberry Pi OS, so it's not a hardware problem. There is some
> software such
> as virtualbox that is not available for the aarch64 architecture.
>
> Regards, Dave Hodgins

I had trouble getting a complete OS for the Pi together. Sound over
HDMI is not supported by my monitor; it has a separate 3 mm audio jack.
I had a couple of USB speakers lying around. They work well, and volume
can be controlled with the keyboard. I am still running off the mini
sdcard. According to the reviews, a 2 inch sd card works a lot better
on the Pi 4, but on the 400, it would have to be external.

Interest in RISC CPUs is growing. The Microsoft Surface runs a RISC OS,
and others have got Windows 10 and 11 running on the Pi 4/400.

On 3/1/22 08:23, Vincent Coen wrote:
> Hello Doug!
>
> Sunday January 02 2022 16:18, Doug Laidlaw wrote to All:
>
> > A Happy New Year to all.
>
> Same to your self.
>
>
> > My usual PC has been giving me one problem after another over the last
> > few days. BIOS setup problems. had to reinstall Windows 10. one
> > of the distros I was looking at installed its bootloader on the second
> > HD instead of the first, causing all kinds of confusion. As soon as I
> > put the covers back on, it thought up a new fault. The latest is that
> > something triggers a repeated line of figures every so often,
> > independently of the OS.
>
> > With so little achieved, I am considering using the Pi 400
> > exclusively. It won't run Windows, but that is about its only
> > limitation. My Pi 3B is now sitting on my desk, headless, running
> > BOINC. There is a bug in BOINC that even the developers can't fix, so
> > putting it on its own machine isolates it and prevents it from slowing
> > everything down to a crawl.
>
>
> The Pi WILL run Windows you just have to get the correct ARM version.
>
>
> Vincent
>
>
Thanks, Vincent. The Pi4 has indeed made great strides. Since the
Surface runs ARM, the software must be around, but I still can't connect
an external drive. I found a tutorial on the Web, and everything
installed as it should, but the boot sequence is set in the EEPROM. For
that to work, a user mwanting to run the second option must make sure
that the input for the first option is unplugged.

As it stood, I could have Kodi or Raspbian, but there was no way to
install both side-by-side. I discovered PINN on SourceForge. It is an
alternative to NOOBS, and allows one to install multiple OS'es.

Hello Doug!

Monday January 03 2022 09:47, Doug Laidlaw wrote to All:

>> The Pi WILL run Windows you just have to get the correct ARM
>> version.
>>
>>
>> Vincent
>>
>>

> Thanks, Vincent. The Pi4 has indeed made great strides. Since the
> Surface runs ARM, the software must be around, but I still can't
> connect an external drive. I found a tutorial on the Web, and
> everything installed as it should, but the boot sequence is set in the
> EEPROM. For that to work, a user mwanting to run the second option
> must make sure that the input for the first option is unplugged.

IT works for the 3B+ as that is what I have and as far as I know the 4 does
PROVIDING you have upgraded the firmware.

> As it stood, I could have Kodi or Raspbian, but there was no way to
> install both side-by-side. I discovered PINN on SourceForge. It is
> an alternative to NOOBS, and allows one to install multiple OS'es.

No the Raspberry system is totally different from any thing else I have
used just take a look at the files in /boot.

and no I have not taken a real hard look.

Vincent

On 3/1/22 06:31, David W. Hodgins wrote:
>
> I have an rpi 4b running Mageia 8 with
> http://mirrors.kernel.org/mageia/distrib/8/aarch64/install/images/Mageia-8-rpi-aarch64-plasma5.img.gz
>
> extracted to an sdcard.
>
> It works better than I expected in terms of cpu capacity. The sdcard is
> slow for
> disk intensive operations.

Thanks for the link, David. I was able to download the file and install
it with Etcher (isodumper won't recognize archives.) When I try to boot
it, it goes into an endless loop, with a variety of startup screens in
black, red, yellow and green. Manjaro doesn't do this.

On 2022-01-04, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@hotkey.net.au> wrote:
> On 3/1/22 06:31, David W. Hodgins wrote:
>>
>> I have an rpi 4b running Mageia 8 with
>> http://mirrors.kernel.org/mageia/distrib/8/aarch64/install/images/Mageia-8-rpi-aarch64-plasma5.img.gz
>>
>> extracted to an sdcard.
>>
>> It works better than I expected in terms of cpu capacity. The sdcard is
>> slow for
>> disk intensive operations.
>
> Thanks for the link, David. I was able to download the file and install
> it with Etcher (isodumper won't recognize archives.) When I try to boot
> it, it goes into an endless loop, with a variety of startup screens in
> black, red, yellow and green. Manjaro doesn't do this.

I believe what he meant is that first you have to uncompress the file
gunzip Mageia-8-rpi-aarch64-plasma5.img.gz
and then use dd to copy the .img file to your sdcard.
This is not an archive. it is a compressed image file.

On 4/1/22 03:47, Vincent Coen wrote:
> No the Raspberry system is totally different from any thing else I have
> used just take a look at the files in /boot.

I just looked at the filesystem of Manjaro's release for the Pi. Its
boot partition is very similar to what you saw on the Pi itself, so I
guess that much of it is required by the RISC-type filesystem. A post
says that the Pi4 now has firmware to run Grub2 and UEFI, but the
tutorials recommend using a different bootloader for multiboot, e.g.
berryboot, which seems to offer the widest choice of OS. A method with
berryboot is described at

https://raspberrytips.com > raspberry-pi-dual-boot

I did find a comprehensive discussion of all the available options, but
there are plenty of similar articles.

Why would you want a dual boot? Just put Mageia onto a separate sim.

On 2022-01-05, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@hotkey.net.au> wrote:
> On 4/1/22 03:47, Vincent Coen wrote:
>> No the Raspberry system is totally different from any thing else I have
>> used just take a look at the files in /boot.
>
> I just looked at the filesystem of Manjaro's release for the Pi. Its
> boot partition is very similar to what you saw on the Pi itself, so I
> guess that much of it is required by the RISC-type filesystem. A post
> says that the Pi4 now has firmware to run Grub2 and UEFI, but the
> tutorials recommend using a different bootloader for multiboot, e.g.
> berryboot, which seems to offer the widest choice of OS. A method with
> berryboot is described at
>
> https://raspberrytips.com > raspberry-pi-dual-boot
>
> I did find a comprehensive discussion of all the available options, but
> there are plenty of similar articles.