Long Story Short
Fedora 44 is a big step up from Fedora 42 on the Raspberry Pi 5. The install process is still the same, and it supports the Pi well. The main limit is still the UEFI to VideoCore translation layer, but the base OS clearly has potential.
What’s Changed With Fedora 44
- Same install steps as before: build
disk.raw, flash it withdd, add the firmware to the EFI partition, and boot. - Fedora 44 boots and runs well on the Pi 5.
- The UEFI to VideoCore translation layer still limits what works.
Starting a Hummingbird Image for RPi5
I started working on a Raspberry Pi 5 compatible Fedora Hummingbird bootc image. The goal is simple: get hummingbird-bootc running on the Pi 5.
- I’m reusing parts of the AlmaLinux Raspberry Pi kernel.
- I removed the UEFI and GRUB components.
- The Pi boots natively with VideoCore instead.
Where It Stands
- I’ve almost finished a testable image. It’s still somewhat unstable and barely tested.
- It works out of the box with Hummingbird and boots natively with VideoCore. (I’m not sure “out of the box” is the right term here, but so far everything works. I don’t have the resources to test the other areas yet.)
Learning as I Go
Low-level work is very very new to me. I’m picking things up one step at a time, and each boot failure teaches me something new.
This is mostly a status update. It shows what this Fedora image can do so far, and why my interest in bootc pushed me to put in the effort to learn and explore. The next post will cover the Hummingbird image in more detail. Stay tuned!