Bookworm 6.6.y for the uConsole and DevTerm

No, the trackball had been working fine up til now. I went back to factory image, and the problem followed me. I decided to remove, and refit the trackball assembly and that fixed the problem. I noticed a bit of play in the frame. It is possible to wiggle the unit vertically by fraction of a mm, and perhaps contact was bad.

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Never ask again, sorry guys, and thank you.

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Hey, I know the feeling, but don’t worry about it. Linux community is “kind” of like that most of the time.

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Ah, just ask away and don’t mind the bad comments - it’s the internet…

Regarding your question - this image is based on Debian Linux which does not offer an add/remove software menu in its standard install. So you’d use the commandline for this purpose.

There are graphical tools available too. One of wich is synaptic which you can install using the already mentioned sudo apt install synaptic command.

I know that there are other/easier to use applications too. But since I do not use any graphical software management tools I do not know any and others will have to answer this question - sorry.

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Raspbery Pi OS uses pi-package to manage software by default. And it looks like the uConsole image has it installed. You should be able to install it in this image by opening a terminal and running:

apt install pi-package pi-package-session

I… do not know if that will add it back to the menu, because I’m not familiar with the pi desktop or the uConsole environment. But it probably will!

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Ah, just ask away and don’t mind the bad comments - it’s the internet…

That’s a fact, jack.
Ask the questions and ignore the haters, man.
I’m a grouchy old man too but if people are learning they can’t if they don’t ask questions.
Ignore me if I get on your nerves too, ITS THE INTERNET!

Still downloading these images (desktop and lite) – it’d be great to include some sort of hash to validate disk image integrity, also it’d be nice to know what desktop environment is used.

P.S.1: I plan to use KDE-plasma for my uconsole, it’s the next desktop that I want to use since I saw it on my Steamdeck. (-;

P.S.2: Here’s md5sum generated based on images downloaded on my computer.

8c7bf99af00ec45b7814f58ac4a61be6  ./ClockworkPi-CM4-Bookworm-6.6.31.img.xz
eb549779d4ebd267967e0bb82d16b82b  ./ClockworkPi-CM4-Bookworm-Lite-6.6.31.img.xz

LXDE is the DE, if you are going to install KDE I would just download the lite version.

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Thanks to your work, I successfully upgraded the testing branch.

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Not sure if it’s only me, but with full image I cannot get the brightness control (fn + ,.) working in LXDE. I could, however, use the hot key when I was on KDE-Plasma with the lite image.

LXDE needs to be set, post #79 has the configs for it.

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Check out the OP for updates:

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Thanks for the suggestion of using pi-gen. I’ve been playing around with compiling and packaging the custom kernel as a .deb and building images. Seemingly replicating your efforts. However, I’ve yet to achieve a good build pipeline. The lack of documentation from rpi on postinst/preinst-stuff makes me a bit frustrated. Should one: compile custom kernel, wget rpi kernel deb, extract and tweak DEBIAN/*, build new deb based on that with the custom kernel?

I digress. As your images and kernels is getting some traction in the community, I (likely others aswell) would appreciate if you added the build scripts/steps/workflows on GitHub. I for one would be grateful to be able to build upon your knowledge, replicate your efforts and contribute back.

Furthermore it would add some transparency to the process. Some folks get a bit worried about downloading compiled software on MEGA coming from someone with a seemingly new GitHub account. :slight_smile:

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You can package your kernel however you’d like. if you’re new to it i’d start with doing it while compiling using bindeb-pkg during compile. The way i’m doing it not the standard way. i need some old radio stuff to compile that expects stuff in certain places that has been changed, hence some dups in my kernel package. As for my build scripts it will be a process to sanitize them to release. I’ve just added to a bunch of ones I’ve had for years.
I don’t really use github I just put the kernel up there for others, I’m mostly on the mailing list and just use a private git. I understand the hesitance with mega but its free and I also have a google link.
I did this image to have a kernel that i could compile the modules for my equipment and that wasn’t old and out of date. If I didn’t need the newer kernel for work I probably wouldn’t have done it.
As for the lack of documentation… There’s tons on kernel packaging, you just have to know what you want to accomplish then look up that way of doing it. Besides if someone holds your hand and shows you the way, how are you going to learn.

Lets table the discussion of my efforts of learning about custom kernels and rpi boot magic and focus on what I perceive as a more pressing topic.

Essentially what I’m trying to convey is that as long as the custom kernel compilation and image building steps/scripts/CI-workflows are unavailable for the community to use and scrutinize, I would personally be hesitant to utilize your kernel/images and recommended them in the community.

I’m not actively trying to throw you under the bus here, but in this day and age we should all be cautious. Trust but verify and all that.

That you had a need for newer kernels, built and shared it the community is commendable. If you don’t want to be transparent with how everything is made, that’s totally OK!

But everyone else that scrolls by, please make an informed decision before flashing a OS-image made by a stranger on the internet. I would argue that the security implications are huge.

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I had a need and I shared what I did. I uploaded my changes for everyone. The userland scripts are python you can just look. You can download rpios and run a diff and see all the changes. I used pi-gen to build it. You just need to change out the kernel, raspi-firmware, and the configs.txt with the clockwork ones and the repo and build. Plus whatever tweaking you want.

Someone in the discord just got a new Ubuntu build up and going compiling everything themselves using the kernel repo. Again it’s all out there, a lot of people just don’t like GitHub and don’t use it.

You can unpack my kernel package, or any package and check them out. I just really dislike copy/paste guides, that’s not how we learn. If I just put up my scripts for people to run then I’m supporting questions on the scripts and why a change ain’t working. Instead of helping people learn.

If you don’t want to then don’t use it then it’s that simple. Your first post in this community was asking for stuff, not contributing or checking everything out first. All of your post have just been asking for stuff not a “I ordered this” or anything.

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I’m really grateful to Rex for sharing this image, but if you’re looking for an open source image that is maintained by a community of developers with a mission of providing long term support to functionally abandoned hardware I can strongly recommend PostmarketOS.

My expectations for support and documentation from a community project are different than one guy on a forum.

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Hello, I just got my uConsole and installed your image and so far everything is great (have yet to try the 4g module as I don’t have a SIM, Maybe I could use the sim from my phone to test? no idea if any sim card works, I know nothing about cellular stuff).

I am very familiar with coding and working in Raspbian BUT I have never built a Linux OS or kernel etc. I wanted to try out KDE P6 for the first time as this seems like the perfect device but from what I have read it seems this DE would run better on Archlinux with Weyland vs Raspbian Debian. I’m curious to get your guy’s thoughts on if that is accurate or not. Looking at @Rex 's repo I am struggling to understand how to recreate all this hard work but for Archlinux. (again I have no experience with this so I am still learning)

There is @Snoozer94 mini guide on building an OS AND clockworkpi’s guide on building a cm4 image. Is this the correct place to start learning and I would just replace Debian with archlinux in @Snoozer94 instructions? How do I go about learning how to understand and replicate @Rex 's changes?

Any advice or education is super appreciated!

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kde will work good built off bookworm lite. there is a arch image, if arch is the way you want to go. i was running manjaro the other night on my devterm, it was easy to get going just by kit bashing the kernel into it. @Snoozer94 guide will help accomplish that. im not sure on building arch from scratch on rpi though. pi-gen is great for debian based distros though. make sure you include the audio userland stuff when you make your image.

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By audio stuff are you referring to the “clockworkpi-audio-shutdown_0.2” and “clockworkpi-audio-patch_0.2” .deb files? I don’t know how to inspect .deb files to understand how they work so I guess I will start with figuring that out. In your mega files is it correct to say all the .deb files under “AK-Rex’s ClockworkPi Packages” contain all the changes you made for the clockworkpi stuff? and as long as I understand and recreate those that is the core of the changes. Then past that I would need to understand what changes were made to the kernel itself??

I also don’t know what pi-gen is so I will do some learning there also. I have never used arch and mainly use Raspbian or Ubuntu. But reading online it seemed that arch was the way to go to get the most performance out of hardware-accelerated KDE. Is that not the case?