WPSD Bookworm and Raspberry Pi 5 Status
Believe it or not, WPSD has been fully-functional using Bookworm on the new Raspberry Pi 5 platform since December 2023. But as you likely already know, we do not have a disk image available to the public for download quite yet (we get this question often).
Why We Haven’t Released a Bookworm / RPi-5 Disk Image Yet
When we began developing the Bookworm WPSD disk image in late 2023, the goal was twofold:
- Support for the all-new RPi-5 platform (which possessed an entirely new hardware architecture and requires a new operating system)
- “Universal” RPi support, for all major RPi models (Zero[2W], 3, 4, 5).
Besides the new RPi-5 having a new GPIO (and other) architecture, the
Bookworm-based OS deprecates many legacy components and introduces new
paradigms – namely components such as GPIO handling, network management, and
more.
We actually had to develop an entirely new (but very cool) WiFi Manager, as an
example of the work this entails. You can see a preview of it
here.
Meeting the two goals listed above, coupled with the drastic changes in both the hardware and software architecture takes time; from both development and testing perspectives. Put simply, it’s a lot of work.
The good news is, we’ve been successfully running a “closed” beta test for the new Bookworm disk images for quite some time now. The feedback loop is constant and near-real-time, so we can fix issues, etc. rapidly and effectively.
But we feel that we’d rather release a stable and usable disk image that is production-ready.
When the New Bookworm / RPi-5 Disk Image Will Be Released
“Real Soon Now™” 😉
Seriously… we feel relatively soon. And remember, it will be one “universal” RPi architecture disk image that includes support for the RPi-5. We feel we are very close to release, but there are still a few things we need to iron out and test.
We will make an official release announcement here, on our Facebook Group and our Discord Server when it’s available for users to download.