I was wondering if it might be time to add a sticky post to the Astroberry forum to recommend not using Astroberry for new deployments.

I really do appreciate all of the effort Radek put into Astroberry and this is not to minimize that effort. I believe Radek was intending on releasing an updated and modernized version of Astroberry, but that has not materialized yet. This is very unfortunately, because Astroberry has considerable mindshare in the Linux astro community.

I feel like the current state of Astroberry hurts the community more than it helps at this point. There are still people trying to use Astroberry, but not much to inform them that any problems they experience are probably not going to receive attention.

Its a sad state indeed. Is it not possible for other developers in the community to take ownership of Astroberry and give it new life?

There is another way to get this working, and which is actively maintained : the AstroArch

And about AstroBerry, I feel the same (I started with it and moved on with a AMD mini computer after), the Astroberry page should tell it is no longer maintained and the users who want to try it may face issues and surely expect no recent kstars updates.

Valentin

Astroberry was technically two components:

* The Astroberry image including the installed software and prebuilt configs
* The Astroberry APT repo for Debian/Raspberry Pi

The APT repo, in my opinion, was the more important for the community since there is no other option to get prebuilt INDI packages on Raspberry PI official images. I am not sure it was fair to rely on Astroberry for this service. I know I miss using the Astroberry repo for indi-allsky. Now users have to spend 20 minutes to 2 hours building INDI from source.

Where they fail is if they rely on one main developer/maintainer. As soon as that person is unable to actively contribute, it dies a slow death.

I'm one of those people still trying to use Astroberry - I had no idea it wasn't being maintained any longer.

Looks like it's time to try out AstroArch!

The INDI community would not be able to take ownership of Astroberry. Radek owns the astroberry.io site and any branding/trademarks. He still maintains the site--he updated the certificate just a few months back. Relying on a single developer in this case is just the way it works. I think Radek made a great product.

But this thread is not really about the merits of Astroberry or the alternatives. It is really about what is best for the community. Radek has not posted publicly in this forum in about 2 years. Astroberry can still be used, but giving Astroberry the same rank/status as AstroArch does not help new users. A sticky with information about the project state would be immensely helpful. Radek could release an update to Astroberry tomorrow and the stickied info could be deleted.

I can affix a sticky to the Astroberry sub-forum, what should it say exactly? Astroberry is no longer maintained and here are the alternatives?

I will try to stick to the facts without being too negative.

Considering AstroArch has one maintainer as well, it would seem to be a better idea to use Stellarmate or use vanilla Raspian or Ubuntu and just use Nou's scripts to compile the latest versions of everything from scratch:

gitea.nouspiro.space/nou/astro-soft-build

mmm I got your point about having one person maintaining the repository and being stopped if he quits, but this way to do is for people who wants to compile themself the software and the drivers, and they usually know already how to do that. Don't forget the people who does not want to get bored with compiling etc. And doing this way, you'll have to compile it again every times there will be any update. By the way, I have already compiled on Pi4 8Gb and it took 4 hours, you can understand that might be intimidating for people without skills in computer stuffs.

Astroberry and now AstroArch is meant for people who does just want to get their Pi easily ready for imaging.

Stellarmate is a really really good option too, with all updates and the support from Jasem, but it's not free, even if it's really cheap regarding the work. I have a license for this but I don't use anymore as I switched for a amd computer with Ubuntu ppa, I did this to get a faster os and software, but it's because I know how to set all things up for that (creating a wifi hotspot, having remote control, etc). Some people don't want to play with that and just want an easy way to get the Pi working.

best regards

Valentin

The cool thing about computers is if you start something running and go to bed it'll be done when you wake up

I'd encourage you to get Stellarmate X and support Jasem, I have both RPi and X licenses and X is far and away more useful than the RPi version, just because I can compile things like Siril on X, and hardware like my Pegasus Bluetooth EQMOD box actually work!