I am not convinced it is. The same amount of work has to be done but the effort of getting there is greatly reduced if all you have to enter is what you want and the install sorts that out for people.I'm not sure that would be a useful feature. You have to expend effort to specify the packages. Either choose the packages on the running system after the image has been written and booted up, or choose the packages in the image then write the image. It is the same effort either way.You may have thought about this, but would it be possible to add an option to install additional software, before Raspberry Pi OS is written to the SD card?
Whenever I install a new Pi OS I turn to my notes and install all the things I usually do; Telnet Server, 'xrdp', Samba, Pico SDK and Tools, MicroPython source, Arduino IDE and frameworks, various apps and tools I find useful; 'ncdu', 'gtkterm', 'thunar', 'tcc', 'clang', 'mosquitto', 'espeak', etc. Others will have their own list more reflective of what they use a Pi for.
For me, just providing those names, or selecting them from some drop-down or list, letting the booted system deliver me those things would be ideal, minimal effort.
Currently I have to not only find my list of things to install but read my notes to figure out how to install those things, enter the required commands myself. Some are trivially easy, a simple 'sudo apt install' or 'pip3 install' while others can be more complicated and involved. Doing all that on my behalf would save me considerable effort and, made available to everyone, should save a massive amount of effort for those who avail themselves of that option.
I don't expect everything to be installable; I'd hate for my Pi to go into a 10 hour build to deliver me a RISC-V compiler for the RP2 as it did when I last installed that, but there's plenty which takes a lot less, plenty which is available as installable packages.
I also don't expect everything to get configured perfectly for me but it would save a lot of effort, and an awful lot of it doesn't require any configuration. It seems bls's 'sdm' allows customisation so it's not entirely impossible.
I'm not asking for anything more than Botspot's PiApps, 'sdm', Raspberry Pi's Recommended Software, and other apps provide for - Say what you want and you get it. Simples.
If Botspot and bls can do it, I don't see why Raspberry Pi, a company valued at over half a billion dollars and making tens of millions of dollars in profit, would be unable to - Though I acknowledge Raspberry Pi don't accept my 'just throw money at the problem' simplistic perspective.
Yes, it would require Raspberry Pi to expend effort, but set against users collectively expending more effort, I think it would be an appropriate thing to deliver and well worth it.
Just an option to allow users to enter 'do this' scripts would be a start and a low-cost approach. Built-in scripting can be added over time and user contributions would avoid Raspberry Pi having to do everything.
Statistics: Posted by hippy — Tue Dec 02, 2025 11:59 am