Raspberry Pis gain power to flash their own OSes with new network install function The minds behind the Raspberry Pi have revealed a beta version of its bootloader that allows network installation of an OS. As explained in an announcement of the new feature, flashing an OS onto the micro SD cards that Pis use as their boot disk currently requires another computer on which you run the Raspberry Pi Imager or …
I don't think any typical OS did a 32-bit to 64-bit switch with an OTA update. Usually, that kind of thing was done with a new edition that you installed manually. The chances of messing something up with your config would be quite high otherwise. Since they are compatible, you can load in the package repositories for the 64-bit version, update the bootloader and kernel from the packages or by extracting them from the image, and perform a no-reimage upgrade. If you break something, that's why they didn't do it that way when it's already pretty easy to write a fresh OS image to a card and transfer your config over instead.
You can rent cloud based RPi's (RPi3, RPi4 4&8Gb) from Myhic Beasts (https://www.mythic-beasts.com/order/rpi/).
Myhic Beasts have been running netbooted pi's for years. Mythic Beasts and Raspberry Pi foundation work together on a lot of RPi projects, whilst also hosting the RPi web sites (on Raspberry Pi's). (https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/category/raspberry-pi/).
For what it's worth, here in the leftpond part of the world, I ordered an RPi 400 off Amazon on Monday, and it was waiting for me when I got home this evening - two days faster than the shipping estimate, even. Typing this comment on it now. It came from our Canadian cousins at www.canakit.com, and I must say, I'm impressed. Not a bad little system for $99 all in.
Hopefully there's an option to be able to select which remote image server to use; I'd hate to be locked in to someone else's remote boot+install server, when I have my own preferred server.
... and/or when I'm in scenarios where the system I'm installing is necessarily isolated from the internet.
Decided last week I wanted to build my own media centre computer.. so on Friday ordered a RPi 4 8GB (from one of their recommended suppliers on their website)
Got delivered Monday, but had to also buy a SD card reader Monday (from local computer shop) for my computer just so I could run:
dd if=LibreElec.img of=/dev/sdi
Really could have done with that network boot on monday.. my timing and luck is always terrible lol.
I love raspberry pi foundation to bits, they have achieved so much, but we could have had viable and customizable network booting (even diskless sdcardless operation) two generations ago if they just used industry standard opensource u-boot instead of their own homebrew proprietary broadcom ROM boot.
And as they are a big charity now they should get their designs reviewed by some hardware engineers/consultants or purchase some proper hardware testers for e.g. USB so it doesn't take a couple of revisions of every Pi generation to eliminate obvious hardware bugs.
Yes a bit salty, mainly because trying to actually make Pi's work in production (and education is production, students need things to work) - they are big now, not like in the Rpi 1 days.
The charity Raspberry Pi Foundation don’t develop these products, the Foundation are there to promote education.
The SBCs and accessories are pretty good, considering they trailblazed the low cost thing. Enough money has to be spent on compliance already. The occasional oversight is forgivable.
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