Raspberry Pi 4 Preview Release | Endless OS 3.7.7~beta1

#1

We are happy to release a preview version of Endless OS on the Raspberry Pi 4!

This is released as a “preview version” due to some limitations in graphics performance and hardware support, as detailed below. Nonetheless, it includes all the usual Endless OS features supported on other platforms, along with a wide selection of applications. We look forward to improving our Raspberry Pi releases during the coming months.

As a preview release, we especially welcome community feedback on our forum regarding interest in using Endless OS on this hardware, particularly in which contexts these devices are used, what works well, and what needs to be improved.

Installation Instructions

This image requires the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with either 2GB RAM or 4GB RAM. While the OS may boot on the 1GB edition, we expect that it would work poorly with this limited amount of RAM. You will also need a SD card that can hold the uncompressed image you choose to install (16GB for the base image, 32GB for the English variant). For a better experience, we recommend using a fast SD card (Class 10 or faster).

Download the desired image from here (base image with few apps pre-installed, 2.27GB download, signature) or here (English variant with more apps pre-installed, 13.31GB download, signature) and follow the instructions below for the operating system that you are going to use to create the Endless OS SD card for the RPi4.

Please let us know on the forum if you encounter any difficulties during the installation.

Endless OS

To create the SD card from Endless OS, you can use the included GNOME Disks application. After downloading the image and connecting the SD card, launch GNOME Disks, select your SD card on the sidebar on the left, click the ☰ menu on the top-right, and select “Restore Disk Image…”. Choose the image you just downloaded and click “Start Restoring” and then “Restore”. This is very similar to the process of creating Endless USB sticks from Endless OS, described with screenshots on this article.

Windows

To create the SD card from Windows, we recommend using Rufus. If you don’t have it already installed on your computer, download the latest portable version from their website and launch it. After allowing it to make changes to your device (make sure the prompt says it is from a verified publisher, at the time of this writing it is published by Akeo Consulting), connect the SD card to your machine. Select your SD card under “Device”, and “Disk or ISO image” under “Boot selection” by clicking “SELECT”. Then find your image and click on “START”.

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After the process is finished, close Rufus and safely remove your SD card.

Mac OS

To create the SD card from Mac OS we recommend using balenaEtcher, which can be downloaded from their website, and following a similar process to what is described in this article but making sure to select your SD card and the image you have downloaded from the links on these notes.

Apps Support

Most of the apps which are available in the App Center on other versions of Endless OS are also available on Raspberry Pi. Not all available apps have been tested on this device, so please report problems to us or to the apps’ developers. (As mentioned below, apps like games which make heavy use of graphics may perform badly in this preview release – this does not need to be reported.)

Hack

One of the great applications pre-installed on Endless OS on Raspberry Pi is Hack. Learn to code, explore tools for art, and discover craft projects through the Hack icon on the desktop.

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Hack on Raspberry Pi should be considered a late alpha, as opposed to the early beta of Endless OS on Raspberry Pi in general. Applications currently run from ½ speed (for applications with low graphical demands) to approximately 1/100 speed (worst-case for applications with actual 3D rendering or video decoding demands). In general, graphically demanding applications are not recommended for use (see below in Hardware Support and Known Issues for a more detailed explanation).

Some Hack applications are unavailable on Raspberry Pi, due to the different architecture of the platform, so some or all activities in a pathway may be unavailable initially.

Hardware Support

As mentioned on the installation instructions, a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 4GB RAM is recommended for a better experience.

Most essential RPi4 hardware functions are supported, including the SD card, USB, HDMI display and audio, ethernet, 2.4GHz WiFi, and Bluetooth. Please note the limitations with the display and graphics support detailed below.

Known Issues

  • No display driver; a simple framebuffer is used, meaning that common display functionality is not available, including display hotplug, resolution changes, display rotation, etc. Please connect your HDMI display before powering on the device.
  • No hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, which means the graphical user experience is not fully smooth, and apps that make heavy use of graphics may perform badly.
  • No hardware-accelerated video decoding; videos may not play back smoothly.
  • HDMI audio only works on port 0 (not port 1), and analog audio is not supported yet.
  • The 5GHz WiFi frequency band is not available (but 2.4GHz is working).
7 Likes
What is the pefromance and overall experience on RPi4?
Release | Endless OS 3.7.7
What is the pefromance and overall experience on RPi4?
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#5

5G WiFi (Ac) working :slight_smile:

#6

Hi-- some issue with USB mouse/keyboard not being recognized. Running latest Endless OS download (eos-eos3.7-arm64-rpi4.200123-233237.en) from 32 GB SD card on Raspberry Pi 4B 4GB. System boots to the language selection screen but USB mouse/keyboard do not seem to be recognized (swapping back in a regular Raspbian SD into the Raspberry PI - mouse/keyboard work fine). Keyboard is an older Mac keyboard, tried both Logitec and Dell 3-btn scroll mouse. Unable to get far enough in to get to a terminal window. I noticed that USB support from a 2017 support thread may not work on all systems. Curios if there is a fix as it sounds like other people have gotten things working.

Like the look of it so far!

#7

Hi,

For the recognizing issue, could you please help attach the USB keyboard and mice to RPi 4B with regular Raspbian SD. Then, open terminal and type lsusb -v command to have the USB devices’ information. You can upload the output as the attachment.

Besides, could you share what kind of power adapter is being used for RPi 4B? Especially, the output power.

#8

Enjoyed the preview, and look forward to using the full release!
We’ll be using raspbian in the meantime because there aren’t really many options yet.

I bought the PI 4B, so my kid can stream Steam games, and I can do work and school.
On a triple monitor setup, a steam controller is a nightmare to deal with, so giving him his own micro-PC is cheap and effective solution!

Of course the educational software is the best reason, he’s only 4 and loves all games, and I’m sure he’ll really like them because he’s probably going to want to be a programmer too :smile:

#9

Great work, any way of Overclocking this to make it a bit quicker.
Other Pi operating systems have a config.txt which allows Overclocking.

#10

Thanks for the feedback!
We would love to improve our educational offering, can you give us some examples of the options that you are missing on Endless OS that you are using on Raspbian?

For Steam games, do you mean Valve Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/) ? Does this work on any Raspberry Pi software distribution? I thought it was only for x86_64 PCs.

#11

Thanks for the feedback! Endless also has a config.txt file on the FAT boot partition. If it is not already visible in the Documents app then open the Disks app to find, mount and browse the partition.

#12

Thanks I’ll take a look. :+1:t2:

#13

I found the disks app. The boot partition shows up 105mb. It only has unmount so I guess it’s mounted already? I changed mount options to mount at system startup and restarted. I still don’t see more than one drive in documents. I have tried the sd card in Raspbian and lubuntu I can’t find config.txt anywhere.

Regards Lee

#14

Sorry I was confused. Indeed there is no config.txt shipped by default.

You can create config.txt in that 105mb partition. You might need to do it from the terminal as root. You can put overclock settings in there.

I am not 100% sure if the overclock settings will work here (since we use the devicetree from mainline linux - not the one provided by the RPi firmware). But give it a go and see what happens!

#15

Ok

No worries, thanks for the quick response.

#16

Hi, yeah, no problem. I’m just waiting for you guys to add display drivers. Youtube doesn’t function because of that I’m sure.

Yes, Steam remote play works well on raspbian, but not in the way I’d like it… basically streams the entire Windows 10 desktop as opposed to just the game.

I’ll be trying out a couple options, one is demoing IBIK Aster to create 2 workspaces with 2 user accounts, so 1 uses the main graphics card while the other uses integrated graphics.
The other option would be to run VMware, but still have yet to try it.

#17

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