The Raspberry Pi zero 2 w running Raspberry Pi OS – we failed to install the Pi-Apps store, Abiword & Gnumeric

Last Updated on September 22, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

• A major issue of the zero 2 w is the small amount of Ram of only 512MB. But several videos from YouTube video makers encouraged us to try out the Pi zero 2 w.

• One big advantage of the Pi zero 2 w is his low power consumption.
• We made a first idle running time test here:

Are the following Pi’s daily drivers for 24 * 7 applications?

• A 10 000 mAh power bank was sufficient for running the zero 2 w for more than 24 hr idle time.
• Adding an Android phone as a Pi screen would make out of it a breat mini PC with low power consumption.

• Setting it up the zero 2 w is not as easy as the Pi 4:

• We have choosen instead of the procedure in the above video a Pi hat with usb plugs for keyboard and mouse, which makes installation easier.

• There are also zero Pi hats available which addionally have an ethernet plug:

• which is great.

• first we installed Raspberry Pi OS Buster on it according to the recommendation of leepspvideo.

• Then we wanted to install LibreOffice according to this instruction:

• But we failed.

• Then we installed Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye on the zero 2 w with recommended software, where LibreOffice is preinstalled.

• But the startup of LibreOffice on the zero 2 w took about 45 sec, as shown in this video as well:

• With the Pinephone hardly anyone seems to use LibreOffice. Abiword and Gnumeric is recommended instead.

• There are installation instructions available how to install Abiword and Gnumeric on a Pi in the web.
• We tested those but failed.

• We tried to install Abiword and Gnumeric on a Pi 4 according to this instruction in the web as well, but failed also.

• We previously installed the leepspvideo Linux setup part 4 64bit KDE Plasma on a Pi 4. This setup offers the discover app store. With this store we where able to install LibreOffice, Abiword and Gnumeric in a view minutes, and all apps worked fine.

• We therefore tried to install leepspvideo Linux setup part 4 64bit KDE Plasma on the zero 2 w as well, but we failed.

• Abword is also in the Pi Apps store, therefore we tried to install the Pi Apps store on the zero 2 w according to this instruction:

• We failed to install Pi Apps on the zero 2 w. We have described this issue in the comments of the above video.

• leepspvideo suggested to install Pi Apps on a Pi 4 and then transfer the storage card to the zero 2 w.

• We made a fresh install of Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye on a Pi 4 and tried to install Pi Apps, but we failed.

• We checked several other installation instructions for the zero 2 w for Pi Apps.
• Most showed the same command line to install Pi apps.
• One was more detailed, which we tried:

https://www.cyberithub.com/how-to-install-pi-apps-on-raspberry-pi-os-in-10-easy-steps/

• but we stuck with this instruction at step 7: we where not able to install YAD at a first attempt.
• This instruction did not work out of the box either, and we where not able to install Pi Apps, neither on the zero 2 w nor on the Pi 4.