Re: [44net] On Allocations, PoPs, and Proposals

Rob, I already do this (https://hamvoip.org)! I fully understand the concerns. On Tue, 3 Aug 2021, Rob PE1CHL via 44Net wrote: get into a commitment that you need to sustain for many years.  It is doable to make a downloadable image for the Raspberry Pi and maybe some config screen to set it up, and put it on a website, but after some time the software gets outdated, new models of Pi appear that require or prefer a new kernel, the Raspbian gets updated, etc. A good example is HamServerPi, a ready-made image with some hamradio oriented services which was published around 6 years ago.  I downloaded that, put it on SD card, installed it in a Raspberry Pi 1 and played a bit with it.  Nice.  It was based on the first Raspbian (Debian Wheezy I think). I am not really using it as I have a PC running Linux all the time. Recently I had mail contact with someone who was still running it. He wanted to do some new things but there were missing dependencies. Now, this project has been abandoned.  No new images were published anymore.  The user was not really a Linux noob so I explained him how in principle one can update Debian to the next version, and he did that and stepped to the next version (Jessie).  That went well, although it of course was quite some work to process all edits of config files, and he had an issue with a package no longer supported.  Fixed all that.  Now the next step, but that failed completely.  Too many problems. (I have done this on PC systems and I know that it requires quite some attention and skills) So now such a user is at a dead end: they can go back to the saved card image and run outdated software forever and no longer be able to do new things, or they have to re-invent the whole wheel (download recent OS image for the Pi and then install all the wanted packages and configure them). At that time the advantage of having a prepared install is lost completely, works even against you as you have no knowledge of what was exactly done to make that and what you should do to re-create it. So when you make that shiny SD card image today which creates the router with current software, you have to be aware that you have the moral obligation to track the developments of the OS and hardware and keep releasing new versions about once a year, or you will leave your happy users behind in frustration. Then, it may not be that easy after all. Rob On 8/3/21 8:37 PM, David McGough via 44Net wrote: _________________________________________ 44Net mailing list 44Net(a)mailman.ampr.org https://mailman.ampr.org/mailman/listinfo/44net