Hi,
So i tried KiCAD on a Pi400 and must say it‘s quite usable. So what’s the reason for not getting regular releases for Raspian (64Bit) or even Nightly builds?
I‘m not a software guy at all but I think there are opportunities for optimizations for this special platform which such a big user base.
Is it difficult to build KiCAD nightly for Raspian? What are the problems you might encounter?
What are your thoughts?
Cu
David
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Some time ago I tried KiCad on a Pi3+ (I think). It would run it, but it was not a pleasant experience. But, if it was all that I had for a computer, I would have made it work.
It seems to me that people don’t think that the Rasperry Pi is little more than a joke of a computer; they don’t realize how capable it really is.
I have not tried on Raspbian/Pi400, but KiCad itself is not that difficult to compile on most platforms. Usually the hardest part is tracking down the dependencies (and building them if necessary). I haven’t checked what is already packaged for Rasbian. But, there are definitely people out there running KiCad with working hardware acceleration on some ARM mobile SoCs, so it is possible.
So what’s the reason for not getting regular releases for Raspian (64Bit) or even Nightly builds?
Because nobody is a maintainer for those platforms. New maintainers are always welcome.
I’ll agree with you there. The previous IT department at my work made a good case for deploying a whole stack of them across the plant floor to fully implement a paperless labor system (instead of buying several pallets’ worth of towers), and which has been in use for the last couple years.
Raspberry Pi OS (the new branding for Raspbian) is just Debian cake with Raspberry Pi icing. Also the kernel has bespoke bits. But Debian applications should work. Have you tried the ARM builds of KiCad for Debian?
A lot of those prejudices are based on old information. When the Pi 1 came out, it was about the speed of a classic Pentium. As the models evolved and the chips got faster and RAM got bigger they covered more and more ground.
Hi @craftyjon
Because nobody is a maintainer for those platforms. New maintainers are always welcome.
I wish i would have enough experience and time to take this task/job. How can we, or I, find an encourage person or team? So the claim of the Rasperry Foundation is
We work to put the power of computing and digital making into the hands of people all over the world
So I understand KiCAD as a enabler software for “makers” to create their own hardware designs. And the raspberry foundation seems to see that as well, since they released the CM4 IO Board files in KiCAD (5.99 nightly). So we definitly need to bring together the KiCAD and the Raspberry community here.
If the pi foundation cares so much about their mission statement, they would be packaging KiCad themselves which is actually ironic given their release of kicad based designs.