How ridiculously bug happened during or after installing most 64-bit OS in Raspberry Pi (With most stable way install method)
I have a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB RAM which purchased last year. Although official Raspberry Pi OS allows used all 8GB RAM even the OS is running on 32-bit, to get better performance, installing native 64-bit OS is the best solution.
Until this post published, Raspberry Pi Foundation still remaining beta version which some features are missed like hardware video decoding. Therefore, Pi also provide third-parties images which have better support in 64-bit ARM platform. In my case, Ubuntu.
Nightmare after installing Ubuntu Desktop
Ubuntu provides Desktop and Server version for the Pi which Server provides both LTS (20.04) and latest (21.10) one but remain latest for Desktop. Sadly, when Desktop version installed, opening terminal was caused my Pi no response and forcing me switch on and off power supply. Using terminal is unavoidable that any install, config and more must be completed by CLI. This problem is too serious that I have to switch install method from the Server version.
Another bugs happened on other distro
Before installing via Server method, I tried install Ubuntu MATE since it officially provide desktop LTS version. And it hangs on post-install progress and no further progress after 10 minutes. This made me raged and use the complicated way to install Ubuntu.
The actual way to install Ubuntu with Desktop interface from Server
- Download Ubuntu Server for Raspberry Pi (must be choose LTS one)
- Flash downloaded image to your microSD card
- Insert the microSD card to your Raspberry Pi
- Type “ubuntu” for both username and password, and change the password when login successfully
- Run “sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y” first to ensure all programmes are updated
- Run “sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop -y” and ready your beverage since it may take at least 5 minutes or longer depending your network speed and the current configuration of processor clock frequency
- Reboot after install successfully, and you will see the GUI of login screen.
The bugs after installing via mentioned method
This method still bring some bugs. However, these bugs are not going to hang most of the time like glitch graphic. It makes the OS usable with fewer trouble and the most acceptable as far as I see.
Why installing 64-bit OS for Raspberry Pi make so tuff?
Most active Raspberry Pi OS are running Debian-based and only Ubuntu released stable version which make no choice to swapping another OS which enjoying pure 64-bit experience.
For the Raspberry Pi OS, since the OS is built by community one and need take some extra time to make better support for 64-bit natively. In fact, I was installed Raspbian back then Pi 3 era which no one think the Raspberry Pi RAM capacity can be exceed 32-bit’s limit. As a result, they released 64-bit version of official OS is not stable yet and more test need to be done.
Lastly, for non-Debian based OS, most of them have been gave up to support latest hardware support officially which is a risky step since it not absolutely work even follow official documentations. And forcing user to install Debian-based only if the problem is unsolvable.
