Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy) & Bullseye Camera Support

Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy) is a new version of the operating system for users who require the Picamera Python library, the Raspicam apps, or the OMX media player. This video demonstrates camera access in Pi OS (Legacy), as well as the new option to use the legacy camera interface and Raspicam apps in Bullseye.

My previous video on “Raspberry Pi Time Lapse Photography” is here:

More videos on SBCs and wider computing and related topics can be found at:

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:05 Bullseye Legacy Camera Support
05:57 Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy)
11:37 OS Expectations

#RaspberryPi #Legacy #Picamera #ExplainingComputers

[kevinshumaker]

As a commercial enterprise, I understand wanting to limit their exposure to a single version of an OS, however, as an educational foundation, unless they want to really toss the whole of all the legacy educational material out the window, I believe they had to come up with this 'patch' to the new Bullseye.
Since they 'borrowed' Debian in the first place, most of the argument that they 'create' and 'support' the OS is specious at best. The Debian programmers and groups that create the base ARM-HF and ARM-64 images are the ones doing the 'heavy lifting'. RPiFoundation and RPiCommercial only need to support their shims and patches that fit the software to their hardware.
In the future I hope they have learned at least one lesson from this issue.

[ferfromla]

Thank you, Chris, for another informative video. I think you make a salient point about our expectations for free software. Nevertheless, the Raspberry Pi is not free. It is a piece of hardware that comes with software, much like how we buy our computers now. Very few people buy a bare-bones computer these days. So if the hardware is sold with software, it seems that there is a responsibility for the hardware vendor that loads the software to ensure that it works for the essential functions most will use. A camera is one of those. The Pi folks did respond quickly with a fix, but it is far from ideal. The other issue here has to do with expectations. If the vendor labels the OS as an upgrade, then the expectation is that it is improved and better in some way from the previous version. The lesson I suppose is that if your computer is working well, don't upgrade unless absolutely necessary. Breaking your machine is never an upgrade.

[lastinline]

Thanks for the update, Chris. Funny things going on over there. My solution was to simply use the last version of Raspi OS Buster, which I'll be using until this clusterupgrade is settled.

[BeOurBee]

Really glad to learn about that resolution limit in the Legacy OS, and the feature give/take between Legacy and the mainline "compatibility mode" options.
The whole camera situation is a rare misstep on the part of the OS team. But even with the snafu, the foundation still has the absolute best software support among all the SBC offerings. Hopefully something a little more elegant will slip out of the pipeline soon, but if not, well, it's not the end of the world. Old APIs break all the time and legacy code will have to keep up or fall by the wayside at some point, regardless of how well the transition is/n't handled by the vendor.

[ErikZarth]

Good point about software support.
Most of the time you only get one or two kernel updates on an Android phone.
I gotta say I was impressed with the support on my QNAP Nas from 2012.
10 years later and still getting software updates.

[lsav]

Thanks for all the great information this year!

[kelikmasters]

Great video, with excellent explanation of the major differences in Pi OS / Legacy. Just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas! Looking forward to your videos in the new year.

[Paddy_Roche]

Thank you Chris, I am learning a great deal from your Channel. I cannot thank you enough for the great knowledge you are sharing.

[alanthornton]

Wishing you a happy Christmas & New year! Thank you for another interesting video and the hard work put in over the years, I'm looking forward to what'll happen in 2022 and beyond :) The interesting thing is that we don't pay a penny for the OS, updates or patches. Making donations to a Linux distro of choice does help the developers to maintain it, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

[wanyman]

Thanks for another great video. I hope you had a happy Christmas!

[mikiethebikie]

Good comments about operating systems in general.

[NewAgeDIY]

Happy new year Chris. Great follow up video. Very fast turnaround from Raspberry Pi corp. I’m sure your last video on Bullseye problems had something to do with the quick fix!

[anthonymccarthy]

I make a distinction between running my computer when I need it to be secure and when I don't and when I can do what I want to do with one off line with some stable, simple programs, using old junkers instead of relying on one newer computer makes that possible. I like using Puppy Linux with a read-only optical disc as a live boot when I really need security - though who knows how long that's going to work. It is true that the current model of having enormously complex operating systems maintained for free is probably not sustainable in the long run. Very sensible commentary, one of the things I depend on from you. I hope you have a happy New Year.

[MicrobyteAlan]

Thanks for another informative year. See you next year. 👍

[paulj]

Thank you very much for this critical information. I follow your channel and have been very please the time lapse of Growing Cress Seeds, clouds, and ice melting. I would have been lost over this new OS without your help. I fortunately new not to upgrade to the Bullseye OS.
Thank you

[poppabearskitchen]

Excellent job, thank you for your time and effort.

[jamesdecross]

Really useful explanation. I am only now encountering this problem in 2024.

[darnell]

Chris, fantastic closing remarks at the end. A recent _Computerphile_ video about the Log4J Java vulnerablity also touches on this topic. That nearly every government, educational institution, open source project, and billion dollar company depends on software libraries that 2 guys maintain in their spare time speaks to the sorry state of open source funding and its long term sustainabilty.

I don't think that many great solutions that really scale are available yet, but love that the dialogue is being started by folks like yourself Computerphile, Jeff Geerling and hopefully soon many more. Keep up the great work!

[exartemarte]

Season's greetings, Christopher, and thank you for the ongoing stream of informative videos. You make a fair point about funding software support, but people will always find ways to rip off proprietary software whereas hardware, by and large, has to be paid for, so funding software from hardware profits seems to me to be a viable option. The profit on a Raspberry Pi may be small but they shift vast quantities and sell everything they can make - try buying a Pi 4 today (Boxing Day 2021), they're like hens' teeth!

[ahah]

Chris, as usual, very helpful video for us who try to keep up. A couple of things about Bullseye... The new windowing system is incompatible with most VNC servers. It appears to work but it's in the details that you notice missing close buttons, icons that disappear when selected and other tortures for the user. Also, most python libraries do not seem to have been updated. Can't get PIL to install, for example.