Raspberry Pi OS • Clarification on Recommended Update Procedure for Stability-Critical Applications (Pi 3A+)

Hello Raspberry Pi Team,

We use the Raspberry Pi 3A+ running standard Raspberry Pi OS in a stability-critical application for our Oradio. Which is a music player for people with dementia see also these https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCygfB- ... GqTgZiwnUw.

Ensuring a robust and stable operating OS is essential for our users.
The official Raspberry Pi documentation explicitly recommends using the following commands for updating the OS and firmware:
However, we have encounter small but important differences between two versions which were sudo apt full-upgrade within 10 days from each other. More specific, the Sandisk USB stick started to have unreliable connection with the latest full-upgraded system.

The base OS we use is Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64 bit) as specified in https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/

Could you please clarify the official recommendation in scenarios where maintaining system stability and robustness is paramount?
Specifically, which approach to use:
1: the full-upgrade every time we create a image
2: use apt upgrade
3: stick to released base OS, and only update when a new version is released by Raspberry pi Ltd

Or would an other approach?

Thank you very much for your guidance!

Statistics: Posted by OlafatOradio — Sun Apr 20, 2025 3:36 pm

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