Things Degrade — Part 3

Ouch my raspberry Pi Zero became pretty much useless lately.😢 Yet another update to the list of things degrading.

I won this Pi during a local CTF back in 2015 (2016?). But it’s only in 2019 that it found its purpose when a colleague suggested I install Pi-hole on it. It’s been since USB-attached to my router (USB OTG mode / USB network connection) and running seamlessly¹.

So what happened? I updated Pi-hole lately, which went well. But I thought it’d also be a good time for upgrading the underlying deprecated OS version.💥 Yeah well, latest versions of Raspberry Pi OS crash right after a fresh install.😬 And I can’t really install older versions as they are not supported by Pi-hole. After trying for multiple afternoons, I’m giving up.

💀 Bye Pi-hole.

💀 Bye Pi Zero. I hope to find you a new purpose at some point.

Note on one hand I do understand maintenance constraints, limited capacity and the focus on latest hardware and stacks. On the other hand, my otherwise perfectly working Pi Zero is not that old is it?

UPDATE: I will just keep adding items here as they reveal themselves.

• iPad Air 2 (my mother’s) from 2014. It’s 2025-08. Works perfectly. Updates stopped last year. Stuck on iOS 15.8.6. No way to update the certificate store… 🤕 Web sites start failing. I’m unsure what to call it: closed-source, lock-in?

• Nokia 105 from ~2021-2022!! It’s 2025-08. Works perfectly. No network access in France, partial access in Germany. Device only supports 2G which is (being) decommissioned. So I had to buy a 20€ 4G phone and a new nano SIM card.