I don't know where to start with this rant, and frankly I haven't got the time nor inclination to correct all the falsehoods. But I would like to make the following points:# Open Letter to the Raspberry Pi Foundation Development Team
RE: Critical Issues with PINN/NOOBS Recovery Image Implementation
As a user attempting basic recovery operations on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, I feel compelled to address the numerous, significant issues with your recovery image implementation. These problems demonstrate a concerning disconnect between your development decisions and real-world user needs.
1. NOOBS was developed over 10 years ago by RPL to address some simple things, like installing an OS onto an SD card from a Windows PC when few other solutions existed. It's only recovery feature was the ability to wipe the whole SD card and reinstall all of your OSes again. At first it couldn't even multiboot, which was added following a prompt from me to the developer at the time. But you could restore your OSes from the SD card without having to use another PC, once installed. As JamesH mentioned, NOOBS was deprecated over 5 years ago.
2. PINN has nothing to do with Raspberry Pi Limited. It is the result of a fork of NOOBS that I made to help me learn Linux, Qt, and to add additional features that I wanted to see that were outside of NOOBS remit, but all whilst keeping compatibility with NOOBS. It's main use is to install multiple Oses and provide a boot loader selector. Any recovery features are minimal, but sufficient for basic tasks, like backup and restore. So please address your points to the correct people.
3. It's a 50MB download that fits in a 128MB partition (recently expanded from 64MB to support the PI5). It is a very minimal system to allow most of the SD card to be used for your OSes. If you are downloading a 2GB file, you are downloading a version that includes some OS installations that I no longer update nor recommend. Use the pinn-lite version installable from the RPi Imaging Utility.2GB image size with minimal useful tools (compared to GParted's 700MB full-featured image)
4. I have no intention of duplicating the functionality of Gparted. I include parted and fdisk, which are mostly sufficient as PINN manages the partitions itself. Messing with their layout is likely to break PINN.- Absent partition management utilities
5. Really? Have you read the User Guide? They are well known, which is another reason why SSH and VNC are disabled by default. Oh, did you not realise SSH and VNC are included for headless operation? If you have a remote, inaccessible RPi that has Raspberry OS on it, provided you have ssh access, you can even install PINN on it remotely and install other multiple OSes. Have you not read the wiki?No default known credentials for recovery operations
6. The W in 'Zero 2 W' stands for Wifi - so why not use that for headless operation? Or buy a cheap 3 port USB adaptor with built-in Ethernet port.- Zero 2 W has single micro-USB port
OK I've run out of time to answer any more.
To re-iterate:
PINN is NOT an official recovery tool of Raspberry Pi Limited.
It is my fork of NOOBS.
PINN is primarily a multiboot OS installer and boot selector with a few additional recovery features that I find useful.
PINN has a strong user base, but it is by no means essential. Many people get along very nicely without it and don't require any better recovery solution.
I am a hobbyist doing this in my spare time, with a full-time job and family responsibilities.
I have plenty of ideas to improve PINN in the future but very little time.
Maybe it could do with a complete rewrite, but did I mention how little time I have? And you get it all for free!
You do make some good points, but I'm afraid they are swallowed up in the tone and attitude that surrounds them, which I don't appreciate.
I welcome constructive suggestions on my sticky thread or as issues on my github, but I doubt I will comment further in this thread.
No-one is forcing you to use PINN.
If you think you can do better, why not create your own - that's what I did.
Oh, and if you want to update buildroot to a later version, good luck finding one that supports Qt4. Otherwise it's a lot of re-writing. And I'm told later versions of Qt don't play nicely with the graphics. I use Buildroot 2023 for the Pi5 kernel. Still a work in progress...
Statistics: Posted by procount — Tue Nov 19, 2024 11:51 am