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I Replaced My MacBook Pro with a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB for a Day

169 points by geerlingguy 6y ago

fortran77 6y ago
Hey Jeff! I've been using your VirtualBox Centos builds/images for years. It's nice to see the face behind the Box.
vr46 6y ago
Funnily enough, to avoid all the cables and mess, I simply plug my Pi 4/8Gb straight into my iPad, then VNC or SSH into it, and instantly have a development environment. I would have to use some kind of hub to charge the iPad at the same time and plug an external monitor in, but the iPad Pro plus Smart Keyboard plus a Pi works brilliantly. (Where's my cheque, Tim?)
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  Can you expand on that? How do you plug your Pi into the iPad, just a simple USB cable? Do you use an app for VNC/SSH?
  - ascagnel_ 6y ago
    As of fall 2019, You'd need a USB-C to ethernet adapter, and provide separate power for the RPi.
    - bradly 6y ago
      You don't need an ethernet adapter. You can config ssh and wifi on the boot volume after flashing.
  - colechristensen 6y ago
    USB-C powers the RPi, network connectivity comes from wifi.
    - jankotek 6y ago
      you can run ethernet over usb-c, just enable tethering on ipad. pi has build in usb2 port in charging port.
      - colechristensen 6y ago
        Ah that's pretty cool that that works.
  - j_autumn 6y ago
    Probably using Ethernet over usb. I tried the same with a pi zero, one only need to change some config options in the boot partition. Weirdly I wasn’t able to do get the Ethernet working. Couldn’t ssh into the pi :( Maybe because of a cable problem, but I never found out.
  - arthurmorgan 6y ago
    This video should give you a good overview about what's possible with the RPi4 and iPad Pro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR6sDcKo3V8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR6sDcKo3V8
  - vr46 6y ago
    Yup, I had to go through a couple of USB-C cables before I found a working combo (See Pi 4 USB-C woes elsewhere, since fixed) but that was it. I use Blink for SSH/Mosh and VNC Viewer - Remote Desktop. I also used this link to help me get set up: https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gadget/ https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gad...
    - jdminhbg 6y ago
      Awesome, thanks for the pointers.
dhosek 6y ago
>But, sadly, I don't think this year is the 'Year of the Linux desktop'. In general, I think 'Linux on the Desktop' for a mainstream audience is always going to be 20 years away, just like nuclear fusion. Yep. I know there are people who do Linux on the Desktop, but they're people with a lot more tolerance for day-to-day pain than me. I had a job about a decade ago where I had a linux desktop machine as my day-to-day working environment and it was a miserable experience. There just doesn't seem to be the will to make things otherwise.
- wetpaws 6y ago
  Dunno. Linux Mint have been my daily driver for over a year and I see much less issues with it then I had with Win8. I play games in steam, draw stuff, I even have working VR (HTC Vive), everything works just fine or even with less problems then in win (like bluetooth devices, for example)
- Cerium 6y ago
  Things have changed a lot. Over the last year the company I work for has transitioned a couple hundred developers from Windows desktops to Linux desktops and it has been surprisingly smooth. Much better than an experiment I ran myself a number of years prior.
  - colechristensen 6y ago
    If you buy hardware designed by the manufacturer to work with linux then most things are just fine.
  - adarioble 6y ago
    I have seen a fair amount of successful transitions. My company develops open source software and our development team is on Linux/Mac. Works a treat. Sales/Marketing/etc - Windows mostly with some more adventurous users using Mac. Linux is still not there yet, for an end-user overall nice experience.
- m0xte 6y ago
  This. It's why I spend my entire day on windows even though all my targets are Linux.
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
Shocker: A $75 multi-purpose device could not adequately replace his dedicated $1500 device. I don't know what this was intended to prove, exactly?
- avip 6y ago
  (̶4̶5̶$̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶l̶u̶d̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶)̶ Edit: wrong price quoted for the 2GB model.
  - penagwin 6y ago
    That's the 2GB model
  - hyperbovine 6y ago
    $75 for the 8gb model. Plus shipping
- finnthehuman 6y ago
  Yeah, I don't get it either. Has the Raspberry Pi marketing changed significantly that I'm unaware of? I own a few raspberry pis and never saw them as more as either a minimalist toy, cheap learning tool, or easy-entry DIY embedded platform.
  - cannam 6y ago
    An 8G Pi-4 is a pretty powerful computer by Linux-running historical standards. This seems really about application compatibility, not power.
    - sukilot 6y ago
      Most people run modern software and data not historical software and data.
- colesantiago 6y ago
  I'm not sure why anyone would do this other than to waste time, to each to their own I guess...
deathhand 6y ago
This is immensely interesting to me. This is a developer who is familiar with linux servers and infrastructure but in unaware of all the linux desktop oddities that come with it.
- Mr_Sweater 6y ago
  Why is it odd? The linux server and desktop worlds don't mix at all.
- avip 6y ago
  I'm "familiar with linux servers and infrastructure" and would have little idea how to setup linux as my working env for things like editing video. Seems completely orthogonal.
  - deathhand 6y ago
    You are familiar with libraries and dependencies then. You know that its a very complicated mess of spaghetti. You also know that video editing is a very high use of a computer. Even for profit companies like Adobe has trouble with current hardware[1] I get you wanted to write a blog article. Content creation is cool. I don't think you get where computers and technology has come from and necessary where its going. That Raspberry PI would be great for programming GPIO pins to literally do anything for you. This is my favorite explanation of technology[2] and honestly amazed that any of it works. [1]- https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/cc-2020-super-laggy/td-p/10720042?page=1 https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/cc-2020-super-la... [2]- http://bretthard.in/post/dizzying-but-invisible-depth http://bretthard.in/post/dizzying-but-invisible-depth
ViViDboarder 6y ago
A Linux desktop is far less “painful” when it’s on an equivalently powered device as you are used to. I wouldn’t plug a monitor into an iPhone and claim Apple desktops are painful. The real takeaway to me is “ARM desktops are a few years away”.
- rcarmo 6y ago
  Actually, you'd probably find the iPhone outperforms your current laptop (Assuming average 2y-old laptop). It just doesn't have the same UX, or the ability to run desktop apps.
  - ValentineC 6y ago
    I think they're suitable for different tasks. I prefer an iPhone myself for consuming the web and social media, but I wouldn't use it for development work, or running anything computationally-intensive.
pbreit 6y ago
I thought this $120 tablet + keyboard looked interesting but wondering if 2GB of RAM is going to cut it? https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-tablet-with-detached-backlit-keyboard https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-tablet-...
- megameter 6y ago
  A fast SSD does wonders for making lower memory machines feel responsive. I do useful work on a 4GB machine running Win10. There is lag when web browsing, but it's easy to adjust to. That said, it won't cut it if your applications actually do need more than 2GB at a time. And the Pine device doesn't list support for SATA or M.2 either, so you can't count on the SSD being a screamer.
abnry 6y ago
On Ubuntu with an Intel processor I have been very happy with the app ecosystem. I suspect if the Raspberry p Pi had an AMD or Intel chip it'd be less painful.
- lioeters 6y ago
  Your comment made me curious why ARM architecture was chosen for the Raspberry Pi. The following from Wikipedia explained it: > Processors that have a RISC architecture typically require fewer transistors than those with a complex instruction set computing (CISC) architecture (such as the x86 processors found in most personal computers), which improves cost, power consumption, and heat dissipation. > These characteristics are desirable for light, portable, battery-powered devices — including smartphones, laptops and tablet computers, and other embedded systems — but are also useful for servers and desktops to some degree. For supercomputers, which consume large amounts of electricity, ARM is also a power-efficient solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture Power efficiency seems to be one of the big reasons why Macs will have ARM processors. > Current ARM processors are also often more power-efficient, which helps with battery life. Switching to ARM is expected to let Apple reduce its processor costs by 40 to 60 percent. https://www.bloomberg.com./news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aims-to-sell-macs-with-its-own-chips-starting-in-2021 https://www.bloomberg.com./news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-ai...
  - hajile 6y ago
    It was a lot more basic than that. They already had contacts at Broadcom. When a client orders N chips, you make some percentage more just in case something happens with binning. Their deal to buy those excess chips got them a sweetheart deal they couldn't have gotten without ordering millions of units (they also couldn't have gotten it without contacts though). Now they're big enough to make their own orders and even their own chip designs and it's inertia because changing requires a lot of money for new firmware and software changes. Changing would increase device cost for at least a could of cycles. On the x86 front, they're simply never going to get that good of a deal with AMD or Intel.
sitkack 6y ago
Most of this has to do with Linux and not the Pi itself. I use a mac and a linux system side by side, desktop linux is still a tire fire. This is coming from a person who used to run a FreeBSD laptop in the early 2000s.
- zeta0134 6y ago
  I feel the opposite. Maybe it's a matter of the software I use? I find OSX to be clunky and obtuse, filled with notification spam and weird windowing behavior. Linux desktop (Cinnamon in my case) gets out of my way and let's me work. That said, the Pi _really_ is not up to the task. It can be made usable by booting it from an SSD, but it remains somewhat underpowered and has a lot of trouble running even moderately heavy utilities.
- proverbialbunny 6y ago
  Maybe it depends on what software you're using? I use both OSX (MBP) and Linux Mint as my desktop. Everything I use works on both. Both are stable and solid and work perfectly. I'm on a 4k60 monitor. The only thing I had to do is have my graphics card do vsync on Linux. Software vsync on Linux is horrible. GPU vsync has Linux runs smooth as butter the same as smooth as OSX. I also had to manually increase my dpi and font sizes to match my monitor.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    Do you have unified keyboard navigation inside of text editors across all linux applications? Can you reliably cut and paste between all applications? Can you open the menu items with the keyboard? It could be the applications, but I find to get the smooth OSX experience I need to tweak every single application's preferences, many of which do not have have the required level of control, then I need to resort to xmodmap, etc, this is the path to ruin, rather than modify my system I have to modify myself which hurts but I am ultimately more flexible than software. I have come to the realization that the desktop OS you run doesn't matter, use what works for you. I would absolutely love to run Libre software for everything, but it isn't possible. Maybe someone will create a window manager that also does live binary patching and instrumentation, I am convinced that this is the only way, but by the time that comes, everything will run in the browser anyway.
adarioble 6y ago
With Windows practically giving licenses away, Apple coming with MacOS, cheap chromebooks coming with chromeOS, I really don’t get this “Linux on a desktop move”, especially when it is $75 device + $250 of accessories. That said I love Pi, have it for home automation and media server, amazing piece of tech, NOT a desktop replacement and for the most part it’s not even aiming at that.
- jankotek 6y ago
  OS with decent and predictable support are not easy to find. Windows can change overnight after a big update. Most devices you mentioned are junk, since ssd is soldered on motherboard.
- 0x0 6y ago
  Where can I get a free Windows license for my Macbook?
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Anecdotally, I've found you don't really need one if you're fine with a nag in the bottom right corner.
  - nonamenoslogan 6y ago
    Surprisingly enough I've found nearly any Windows 7 or 8's sticker license will work for 10--find any old laptop/desktop with one and you'll have a "free" license.
cannam 6y ago
Although not wrong, and full of interesting details, this is a really puzzling article. It feels a little like writing about how you couldn't get your toaster to boil noodles. (Though not as unsafe.) I use Linux as my main desktop and have always found it very pleasant, but if my main thing was video editing, I wouldn't try to do it with Linux on ARM64 and then grumble when it turned out not to work very well. (Of course what makes the article worth reading is the fact that its author has tried just that, and reported on it. It's an interesting report! It's simply odd that the article seems so disappointed, since surely few readers would have expected any other result.)
- unixhero 6y ago
  This is because suther of OP is an absolute clueless "technology author".
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    He seems to have at least several years of experience working in software on his about page. Not sure if that registers as clueless.
  - cannam 6y ago
    That's nonsense, and I'm ashamed to have written a comment that could yield a reply like this. If that is also how my comment reads, then I am sorry. The original article is a good one. The author is obviously not at all clueless. It should be possible to do a day's work on a computer of similar spec to an 8G Raspberry Pi. That the article was puzzling springs, probably, from familiarity with trying to switch from one platform and architecture to another without any help from the OS in terms of emulation or other support. It's hard to do.
- 0xCMP 6y ago
  Video editing was at the bottom of the article after many other problems he encountered. I do not use Linux as my desktop anymore, but I have, and every time I try I run in to all kinds of issues like this.
SloopJon 6y ago
I'm not sure what the author's background is, but if he did all of this in one day as a Mac-using Linux newbie, I'm actually pretty impressed. There are references to previous posts about the Pi, but it's not clear whether he's used Linux as a desktop O/S before. I'm using Ubuntu on a 4 GB Pi for some Docker experiments, because I couldn't get ARM64 images to work on Raspbian. Is Raspbian the best distribution for the desktop, or is there something better for a 4 or 8 GB Pi?
- hellcow 6y ago
  For what it's worth, I had luck starting with Raspbian, then changing the apt sources to Debian sid (unstable) and upgrading without issues. The default Raspbian desktop environment becomes buggy, but XFCE4 works perfectly. If you want to run Debian on your Pi4, that's a pretty easy path.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  He's not all a newbie; among other things he maintains some well regarded Ansible roles for things like deploying Jenkins.
  - geerlingguy 6y ago
    I’ve been using Linux on the server side exclusively for years and twice before tried to switch to Ubuntu and Fedora (two separate times during Apple’s butterfly-switch years). So I do have some background but not a PhD in Linux in the Desktop. What I’ve found is that if you’re mostly dealing with programming, dev work, and maybe some more specialized graphics work (not just twiddling with artwork and media using the computer as an artistic tool), almost any Linux desktop may be entirely adequate. But if you do like (somewhat more) consistent UIs and a deep catalog (more than 2 in every category) of very good apps, your much better off in Mac/Windows :( I’d like that to change but just like Fusion energy my excitement will not make it happen any sooner than 20 years from now. (I could’ve said that same thing the first time I tried Red Hat for my workstation (against Windows 3.1) in like 1996...).
    - 6y ago
trynewideas 6y ago
While I get that he wants things to Just Work for things the Pi's not designed to do, that's not the goal or design of the Pi in any sense whatsoever. The hypothesis that a Pi would be feasible for his workflow was set up to fail before he started doing anything.
Apofis 6y ago
This is more of a comparison between MacOS and Linux than a Macbook and a Pi.
KingMachiavelli 6y ago
Many of the issues and personal choices made where due to the jump between a non-linux OS to a Linux OS. Even though the 'default' desktop environment is light weight, a tiling WM just as i3 or dwm would run perfectly on the Pi. Light weight application alternatives such as qutebrowser (instead of Chrome) and Spacemacs (instead of VSCode) would also make using a Pi a lot easier. The lack of 4k@60Hz is pretty annoying altough it actually might not be noticable with a tiling WM due to the lack of animations.
- groby_b 6y ago
  Given that Macs (at least the good old trashcan) also can't do 4k@60Hz over HDMI, that was the one comparison that struck me as somewhat unfair.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    >Macs (at least the good old trashcan) also can't do 4k@60Hz over HDMI I cannot speak for the old trashcan ones (assuming this is a reference to the desktop Mac Pro), but this has not been true for at least the last few generations of Macbook Pro laptops. You just gotta make sure your cable supports HDMI2 and that you aren't using one of those multi-port dongles. Finding a cable/adapter that allows 4k@60hz on macbooks might be tricky though (as evidenced by a lot of threads on the topic I found on reddit and Apple forums). I lucked out, and the first cable I bought (direct USB-C to HDMI, not a dongle) ended up working swimmingly with no issues.
    - codetrotter 6y ago
      Do you have the manufacturer’s name and the model number for that cable, or an Amazon link? I’ve been having some trouble with my MacBook Air and a new monitor that I recently bought, and I suspect that the cheap dongle I am using is partly to blame. In particular, when my MacBook Air goes to sleep, and I then later wake it up, the new external monitor does not turn back on. And to make matters worse, the monitor does not even respond to the on/off button on the monitor in this state. So I then have to physically unplug the monitor power cable, which is damn annoying, because the outlet is hard to get to. Weirdly however, my old monitor had no such problem. I did notice, however, that even though the dongle is for USB-C to HDMI, the MacBook Air thinks that it is connected via DisplayPort. Since I’d already put the old monitor away I didn’t check to see if that used to be the case there as well, but I am thinking that conceivably this could have some connection with the inability of the new monitor to wake up. Right now I am not at home, and haven’t been for a while, but as far as I remember, I ended up telling the MacBook Air to never turn off the monitors. However, that is not a good workaround. The MacBook Air is a 2018 model. The monitor is a Svive 34" Curved Pyx 34C801, with 3440x1440 resolution and up to 144 Hz refresh rate. I also connect my desktop computer to this monitor, which is why I bought a monitor with such high refresh rate since my desktop computer is able to deliver video at such high refresh rate even at full resolution. When only the desktop computer is connected, the monitor wakes as it should when I turn on the desktop computer. But when the MacBook Air is connected, whether alone or alongside the desktop, the MacBook Air can not wake the monitor again after the monitor has been put to sleep by the MacBook Air. So i would like to order a cable like the one you are using and see if that will help me avoid this problem.
jankotek 6y ago
I would strugle the same way on macbook, never used this platform. Pi4 is fairly nice desktop. I use it as a backup workstation while traveling.
Havoc 6y ago
Title seems a little cringey. The 8GB model isn't going to perform much better on these tasks that the 4GB on that has been available forever and the $75 device is not a suitable replacement for a $1,299 device. I do use Jeff's work to determine what SD card to buy...but the above has rattled my confidence a bit.
- Avicebron 6y ago
  The title is classic click bait, looks like he's good at it since right below it he has a youtube video of the project. It's probably a hustle for some views/ad revenue and not meant to be a serious project where he legitimately thinks he's building a mac in his room.
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    EDIT: he's on the front page of HN, guess the bait worked..
  - sukilot 6y ago
    At a penny for a thousand views, that doesn't seem a smart play.
    - Avicebron 6y ago
      I don't know his CPM, but a quick google search reveals the average (2018) CPM to be $2.80. I agree not a lot, but hey, worth the passive income probably.
      - geerlingguy 6y ago
        It’s part of a bit of a wide reaching effort to make it possible for me to get all my income from open source work and free ventures. I’m about 25% of the way there. And quick note on YouTube CPMs, they vary a lot by genre. Some of the more popular genres are on the lower end of that spectrum (afaict, based on limited testing). It’s tough because I have a chronic illness and also support a family of five (SAHM, but it seems all parents have been stay at home lately). But as cringey as many in the HN audience may find it, marketing is actually vital to any endeavors success. I try to make it so my work is better than the title suggests, but don’t always succeed. I literally unplugged my MBP and replaced it with a Pi 4 for a day, but that is apparently not literal enough to justify the title ;-)
sloshnmosh 6y ago
It became “The year of the Linux desktop” for me when Windows10 came out. I now use Linux for most everything. I also have 2 MacBook Pros and a MacBook Air but I quickly get frustrated when trying to do anything worthwhile on them and go back to my ancient business class Dell running Linux. YMMV
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  How is your comment related to the R Pi article?
- rnotaro 6y ago
  You see, outside of programming, Windows 10 became my main OS when it released. Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.5 were really shitty in my opinon but Windows 10 "saved" Microsoft for me. I have an Edu/Business license and I absolutely love it. Group policies allowed me to avoid all the "auto-updates while doing work" from the start. I never had any issues with Windows 10.
- fish45 6y ago
  for me it was when I discovered desktop environments and window managers other than gnome/kde. I can't go back to not having so much customization.
war1025 6y ago
Does anyone know how a Pi4 with 8gb ram would hold up compared to a six year old mid-lower tier laptop? It's something I've been curious about for a while and really just waiting for the point where a RaspberryPi-type device is adequate for Facebook / Hackernews / Youtube, which is essentially what I use a laptop for at home.
- icecreammatt 6y ago
  I just got an 8GB one and it works well enough for YouTube and light browsing but I couldn’t use it as a dedicated machine. Certainly is more snappy than the older ones I have. Just visiting the YouTube home page seems to really be pushing it though.
  - war1025 6y ago
    What I am hearing from this is that there are good odds the Pi5 will be a suitable light-duty desktop replacement.
    - icecreammatt 6y ago
      Pretty much, I think it just needs a slightly faster CPU to handle loading JavaScript heavy pages.
      - Narishma 6y ago
        By then the Javascript-heavy pages will probably be even heavier. You'll then be waiting for the Raspberry Pi 6 to run them.
- rcarmo 6y ago
  The 4GB model can run Chromium and Firefox ESR fast enough for me to use Tweetdeck, access all manner of "work sites" (including O365 webmail), the Azure portal, and code a few things (but I am a heavy vim user and can live inside tmux). I use mine as a thin client, and have been fiddling with an Elementary image for it: https://github.com/rcarmo/elementary-os-unofficial https://github.com/rcarmo/elementary-os-unofficial (mine currently doesn't install correctly, but should take a couple more days to fix). YouTube is... passable. What really helps is booting from an SSD -- although my Acer Celeron is still faster.
kvothe_ 6y ago
Next article: I replaced my car with Raspberry Pi... didn't work out. hmmmmmmm.
mark_l_watson 6y ago
When I first bought a RPi, I used it exclusively for writing and coding for several days. Worked OK, so I was surprised about the whining in the article.
- somehnguy 6y ago
  There is a big difference between working OK and working in a pleasant to use manner. Every time I've ever tried to use Linux as my daily driver it has worked OK. But it has never been pleasant to use and as such I never stick with it for too long.
  - mark_l_watson 6y ago
    I usually use a MacBook but I also use a beefed up System76 laptop with a good GPU, i7, and double the memory. Things like large Haskell builds, anything using TensorFlow, etc. runs so much faster than my MacBook there is no comparison. Everyone gets to choose their own setup, but to be honest, if I didn't like my Apple Mac+Watch+iPhone+iPad interop so much, I would always use the much faster Linux system. At my old job, I had the fastest current MacBook Pro configuration and it was much slower than my System76 rig.
    - geerlingguy 6y ago
      If I could customize my Mac like I could with a PC build (mmm more cores in a Threadripper without a $10K Mac Pro minimum...), I would definitely not be using a laptop today :(
rvz 6y ago
Well, I guess running all those favourite Electron apps simultaneously on the Pi wouldn't be a wise thing to do since it would still grind to a slow and painful halt. I would just spare the Raspberry Pi from this Electron app stress testing torture as it evidently cannot handle many of them running at the same time.
varjag 6y ago
Coming up next: AtTiny13 vs Dell PowerEdge.
wysewun 6y ago
I admire how knowledgeable Jeff is in different subject matters. Jeff is a major contributor in the ansible community and very helpful to everyone.
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
And yet many years ago I was using Debian on a laptop with 32MB of RAM. I was using the "Awesome" lightweight desktop and spending 99% of the time in the terminal. SSH to work on remote servers, Vim for development, git, IRC, text email, man and less for documentation (installed locally), rsync. Occasional browsing with Dillo. Believe me or not, I miss the productivity of not being forced to use tons of stuff in browser.
- teleforce 6y ago
  This. I'm not sure how many more years people will eventually realize that web is originally invented for sharing documents over the decentralized internet and not really suited for other type of applications. The proliferation of app-over-web is really pushing it including the online web based video editing [1]. Off course the online companies are loving the status quo since they can sell us advertisements and perhaps our data as well in exchange for online free software, or the dreaded "pay-forever" subscription based software. I agree it's really convenient to go gung-ho all-web but how long can you survive by continuously eating fast food diets? With cheap off-the-shelf multi-core CPU (latest 64 cores/128 threads), terabytes SSD, and terabytes RAM (including the new Optane non volatile memory) the modern laptop/PC is even more powerful than twenty years ago supercomputer [2]. I hope that native applications will make a comeback with the increasing popularity of the compiled programming languages. The internet and cloud are only being used for synchronizing and versioning the application's data over multiple devices rather then online data processing due to inherent limitations of remote bandwidth and latency that's not suited for majority of desktop applications. [1]https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/best-video-editors/ https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/best-video-editors/ [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Origin_2000 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Origin_2000
kevinsimper 6y ago
Don't the Raspberry Pi 4 support 4kp60?
- Narishma 6y ago
  I think it does but only on 1 monitor.
  - geerlingguy 6y ago
    Correct, you need to toggle a setting in the boot config, and your HDMI cable and monitor both have to support HDMI 2.0
andolanra 6y ago
I'm not sure why the conclusion is, "Linux on the Desktop isn't possible," when the big blocker the author had was pretty consistently finding and installing software compatible with a small ARM64 machine. (That's not to say it's not a valid conclusion to draw in general: just that it's a bit of a non-sequitur for this article.)
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  > "Linux on the Desktop isn't possible" That's not his conclusion. This is: > So, in summary, would I recommend the Pi 4 as a worthy general computer for anyone? Definitely no. Would I recommend it as a worthy general computer for a certain subset of computer users. Definitely yes!
  - andolanra 6y ago
    This is literally the last paragraph of the post: > But, sadly, I don't think this year is the 'Year of the Linux desktop'. In general, I think 'Linux on the Desktop' for a mainstream audience is always going to be 20 years away, just like nuclear fusion.
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      Again, that’s not the same as “it isn’t possible”.
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  I didn’t say that. I said the fabled “year of the Linux desktop” is a long ways off, in terms of being a potential option for the vast audience of users who currently own a Mac or Windows computer.
  - wazoox 6y ago
    But the vast audience wouldn't use such an ARM64 machine for that and won't have these problems. The audio problems for instance that you encountered with all applications are obviously related to the hardware, not Linux. Even on my weird desktop running slackware I run Zoom, Jit.si, Cheese, Skype, etc without any problem. It's precisely the other way around, I've seen several articles recently about the fact that Linux adoption on the desktop has soared rapidly, and you see Lenovo and Dell supporting Linux on a large number of machines nowadays. The only thing you showed is that there is no desktop-grade ARM64 Linux machine available.
paines 6y ago
Cool write up/experiment, and I can feel the pain with Linux and Sound issues. A few days ago I had a job interview and they used MS Teams. At first I was completly blown aways that there is a native linux app. For the first 5 minutes I tried to get sound input working but gave up. Luckily once you press the invite link, you can also choose to join via browser, and then sound input worked directly as expected.
skykooler 6y ago
I'm amazed that, given how long video editors have been around, there isn't something better than OpenShot or Kdenlive; I would have expected that someone would be working on the video equivalent of Gimp/Audacity/etc.
- tartoran 6y ago
  Did you try ShotCut?
adamredwoods 6y ago
I remember when people were trying to do day-to-day work on their smartphones, then the iPad came out and they started to work on those, which eventually led to the iPad Pro and Microsoft Surface Pro and now fully capable of doing day-to-day work on it. Keeping pushing the boundaries!
- adarioble 6y ago
  With the slight difference that any of these boundaries pushers (never did) cost $75. Not now not then.
rubatuga 6y ago
The author is right, none of these problems exist on macOS, and if you want the year of the Linux desktop to finally come, it will have to solve all of the issues highlighted. The commenters aren't going to be there to defend the true use-cases of "ARM Linux Desktop" to the end-user, so expect them to be completely turned off by this experience.
- wazoox 6y ago
  None of these problems exist on my XPS running Ubuntu, either. Of course when going to a 75$ not-desktop-grade machine from a $1500 Mac you'll find some compromises along the way. That comment doesn't make the slightest sense, frankly.
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  I remember saying in 2000 to someone that Linux cannot simultaneously have a reputation as "elite" and being for hackers and also have its Year of the Desktop. Of course, we ask so much more of desktops now than when I was running a beta of NT 5, so I think all of the goalposts have moved (or perhaps a rising tide has lifted many boats). Still, whenever I try to set up a machine that is the equivalent of my "not very thinking hard, screwing around with my brain off" Windows setup, I keep coming across this friction, a drag to any momentum I develop. I think the issues are multiple, complex, and fairly entrenched. It's a shame because I would like to be able to set up machines for friends that are familiar, easy to use, and so forth, but my occasional efforts have been stymied.
julianeon 6y ago
If you have a teeny-tiny amount of money - like, $75, the cost of a Pi - and you want to get the best work computer/laptop and developer experience you can, for your buck - you'd be dumb to buy a Pi. Instead, get a used laptop - say, a Thinkpad. Install Linux on it. There you go: the best computer you can get, performance-wise, for $75.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mickw 6y ago
If the author did all of this in one day as a OSX/Linux novice, hat's off! Took me a good bit of playing around to get fluid using Linux for the first time
hidiegomariani 6y ago
The only purpose I could see raspberry pi in, is as a development env where you can ssh into and do work as a pure Linux kernel. If I was to use an arm desktop full time it would be microsoft surface pro x (although with its quirks) having much more support and apps Also Apple is planning to move MacBook line to arm although time will tell whether that will work out or not. In the meanwhile we might need to stick to x86 architectures for a while
ArtWomb 6y ago
Related: Building a Raspberry Pi Cluster https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/build-a-raspberry-pi-cluster-computer https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/build-a-raspberry-pi-... And: Raspberry Pi Vulkan Driver Makes Progress But Long Road Remains https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi-Vulkan-Summer-2020 https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi... I had no idea til this week the RP4-B had dual 4k hdmi output. And I love the idea of a cluster for testing microservices. But regarding graphics performance I think I would opt for NVidia's Jetson Nano.
ex3ndr 6y ago
I didn't get what's wrong with H.264 since it present in every pi even on pi zero.
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  If you don’t add the right options to FFmpeg it can’t take advantage of the CPU acceleration, I believe.
MintelIE 6y ago
I've been using a Pi 4 4GB as a desktop for a couple months now. Considering that my other main computer is an ancient Thinkpad, I don't feel hampered by the speed. I used a Pi 3B for a desktop replacement for a while and while it was fine with my typical use (emacs+mostly command line) "modern" browsing was uncomfortably slow. It was perfectly capable of video playback in standard formats but there are problem sites using codecs which are not supported by the media decoder in the Pi. The situation with the Pi 4 is quite similar but it's just about fast enough for Youtube now. Most any school or office could switch to the Pi 4 seamlessly these days for sure though.
libx 6y ago
I feel the same pain. Sound is a problem in my x86_64 Linux. One of the sound cards doesn't work anymore, don't know what happened. But if I pass it through to a Windows virtual machine with virt-manager, it works! So many problems for the desktop, that come almost day in day out that I'm considering trying Haiku OS for the desktop. Just need something that works.
- salawat 6y ago
  I have the feeling that between graphics and sound processing there is just a dearth of material about how the underlying mechanisms that drive that portion of computing actually work. At least, I haven't really the magic words to represent "For God sake, what do I have to line up to make this stiff work" yet. It's front and center of this decades computing goals for me. To that end, I've been looking into things like how X actually works, actually making use of graphics processing hardware, and the like. If anyone has some good reading, I'd love to know.
ngcc_hk 6y ago
The other article on Apple switch to arm might help. Those software on mac are on arm. You have now some video editing software on ipad that works well. The question is which is the next winter, AppleArm or ...
osdoorp 6y ago
I Replaced My MacBook Pro with a Cat for a Day
- sloshnmosh 6y ago
  I tried that too but my cat had trouble interfacing with the mouse. (Sorry)
hofstee 6y ago
I can't even get WiFi working on my Pi 4. I can only resolve IPv6, anything IPv4 fails. I suspect it's a router issue but I have no control over that, so I simply can't use the Pi.
Andys 6y ago
Tangentially, I permanently replaced my Raspberry Pi with an x86 Upboard and it is just so much nicer to use and not really that expensive, though there are some high end models https://up-shop.org/ https://up-shop.org/
sitzkrieg 6y ago
great choice for those looking to waste time
wltprgm 6y ago
Since people are so disappointed with ARM64 video/audio viewing/recording/editing applications, they should write their own and contribute to Linux ARM64 and stop complaining RISC V on FPGA sucks, I wouldn't use it either

169 points by geerlingguy 6y ago

Hey Jeff! I've been using your VirtualBox Centos builds/images for years. It's nice to see the face behind the Box.

vr46 6y ago

Funnily enough, to avoid all the cables and mess, I simply plug my Pi 4/8Gb straight into my iPad, then VNC or SSH into it, and instantly have a development environment. I would have to use some kind of hub to charge the iPad at the same time and plug an external monitor in, but the iPad Pro plus Smart Keyboard plus a Pi works brilliantly. (Where's my cheque, Tim?)

jdminhbg 6y ago
Can you expand on that? How do you plug your Pi into the iPad, just a simple USB cable? Do you use an app for VNC/SSH?
- ascagnel_ 6y ago
  As of fall 2019, You'd need a USB-C to ethernet adapter, and provide separate power for the RPi.
  - bradly 6y ago
    You don't need an ethernet adapter. You can config ssh and wifi on the boot volume after flashing.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  USB-C powers the RPi, network connectivity comes from wifi.
  - jankotek 6y ago
    you can run ethernet over usb-c, just enable tethering on ipad. pi has build in usb2 port in charging port.
    - colechristensen 6y ago
      Ah that's pretty cool that that works.
- j_autumn 6y ago
  Probably using Ethernet over usb. I tried the same with a pi zero, one only need to change some config options in the boot partition. Weirdly I wasn’t able to do get the Ethernet working. Couldn’t ssh into the pi :( Maybe because of a cable problem, but I never found out.
- arthurmorgan 6y ago
  This video should give you a good overview about what's possible with the RPi4 and iPad Pro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR6sDcKo3V8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR6sDcKo3V8
- vr46 6y ago
  Yup, I had to go through a couple of USB-C cables before I found a working combo (See Pi 4 USB-C woes elsewhere, since fixed) but that was it. I use Blink for SSH/Mosh and VNC Viewer - Remote Desktop. I also used this link to help me get set up: https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gadget/ https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gad...
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    Awesome, thanks for the pointers.

dhosek 6y ago

>But, sadly, I don't think this year is the 'Year of the Linux desktop'. In general, I think 'Linux on the Desktop' for a mainstream audience is always going to be 20 years away, just like nuclear fusion. Yep. I know there are people who do Linux on the Desktop, but they're people with a lot more tolerance for day-to-day pain than me. I had a job about a decade ago where I had a linux desktop machine as my day-to-day working environment and it was a miserable experience. There just doesn't seem to be the will to make things otherwise.

wetpaws 6y ago
Dunno. Linux Mint have been my daily driver for over a year and I see much less issues with it then I had with Win8. I play games in steam, draw stuff, I even have working VR (HTC Vive), everything works just fine or even with less problems then in win (like bluetooth devices, for example)
Cerium 6y ago
Things have changed a lot. Over the last year the company I work for has transitioned a couple hundred developers from Windows desktops to Linux desktops and it has been surprisingly smooth. Much better than an experiment I ran myself a number of years prior.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  If you buy hardware designed by the manufacturer to work with linux then most things are just fine.
- adarioble 6y ago
  I have seen a fair amount of successful transitions. My company develops open source software and our development team is on Linux/Mac. Works a treat. Sales/Marketing/etc - Windows mostly with some more adventurous users using Mac. Linux is still not there yet, for an end-user overall nice experience.
m0xte 6y ago
This. It's why I spend my entire day on windows even though all my targets are Linux.

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago

Shocker: A $75 multi-purpose device could not adequately replace his dedicated $1500 device. I don't know what this was intended to prove, exactly?

avip 6y ago
(̶4̶5̶$̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶l̶u̶d̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶)̶ Edit: wrong price quoted for the 2GB model.
- penagwin 6y ago
  That's the 2GB model
- hyperbovine 6y ago
  $75 for the 8gb model. Plus shipping
finnthehuman 6y ago
Yeah, I don't get it either. Has the Raspberry Pi marketing changed significantly that I'm unaware of? I own a few raspberry pis and never saw them as more as either a minimalist toy, cheap learning tool, or easy-entry DIY embedded platform.
- cannam 6y ago
  An 8G Pi-4 is a pretty powerful computer by Linux-running historical standards. This seems really about application compatibility, not power.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    Most people run modern software and data not historical software and data.
colesantiago 6y ago
I'm not sure why anyone would do this other than to waste time, to each to their own I guess...

deathhand 6y ago

This is immensely interesting to me. This is a developer who is familiar with linux servers and infrastructure but in unaware of all the linux desktop oddities that come with it.

Mr_Sweater 6y ago
Why is it odd? The linux server and desktop worlds don't mix at all.
avip 6y ago
I'm "familiar with linux servers and infrastructure" and would have little idea how to setup linux as my working env for things like editing video. Seems completely orthogonal.
- deathhand 6y ago
  You are familiar with libraries and dependencies then. You know that its a very complicated mess of spaghetti. You also know that video editing is a very high use of a computer. Even for profit companies like Adobe has trouble with current hardware[1] I get you wanted to write a blog article. Content creation is cool. I don't think you get where computers and technology has come from and necessary where its going. That Raspberry PI would be great for programming GPIO pins to literally do anything for you. This is my favorite explanation of technology[2] and honestly amazed that any of it works. [1]- https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/cc-2020-super-laggy/td-p/10720042?page=1 https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/cc-2020-super-la... [2]- http://bretthard.in/post/dizzying-but-invisible-depth http://bretthard.in/post/dizzying-but-invisible-depth

ViViDboarder 6y ago

A Linux desktop is far less “painful” when it’s on an equivalently powered device as you are used to. I wouldn’t plug a monitor into an iPhone and claim Apple desktops are painful. The real takeaway to me is “ARM desktops are a few years away”.

rcarmo 6y ago
Actually, you'd probably find the iPhone outperforms your current laptop (Assuming average 2y-old laptop). It just doesn't have the same UX, or the ability to run desktop apps.
- ValentineC 6y ago
  I think they're suitable for different tasks. I prefer an iPhone myself for consuming the web and social media, but I wouldn't use it for development work, or running anything computationally-intensive.

pbreit 6y ago

I thought this $120 tablet + keyboard looked interesting but wondering if 2GB of RAM is going to cut it? https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-tablet-with-detached-backlit-keyboard https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-tablet-...

megameter 6y ago
A fast SSD does wonders for making lower memory machines feel responsive. I do useful work on a 4GB machine running Win10. There is lag when web browsing, but it's easy to adjust to. That said, it won't cut it if your applications actually do need more than 2GB at a time. And the Pine device doesn't list support for SATA or M.2 either, so you can't count on the SSD being a screamer.

abnry 6y ago

On Ubuntu with an Intel processor I have been very happy with the app ecosystem. I suspect if the Raspberry p Pi had an AMD or Intel chip it'd be less painful.

lioeters 6y ago
Your comment made me curious why ARM architecture was chosen for the Raspberry Pi. The following from Wikipedia explained it: > Processors that have a RISC architecture typically require fewer transistors than those with a complex instruction set computing (CISC) architecture (such as the x86 processors found in most personal computers), which improves cost, power consumption, and heat dissipation. > These characteristics are desirable for light, portable, battery-powered devices — including smartphones, laptops and tablet computers, and other embedded systems — but are also useful for servers and desktops to some degree. For supercomputers, which consume large amounts of electricity, ARM is also a power-efficient solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture Power efficiency seems to be one of the big reasons why Macs will have ARM processors. > Current ARM processors are also often more power-efficient, which helps with battery life. Switching to ARM is expected to let Apple reduce its processor costs by 40 to 60 percent. https://www.bloomberg.com./news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aims-to-sell-macs-with-its-own-chips-starting-in-2021 https://www.bloomberg.com./news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-ai...
- hajile 6y ago
  It was a lot more basic than that. They already had contacts at Broadcom. When a client orders N chips, you make some percentage more just in case something happens with binning. Their deal to buy those excess chips got them a sweetheart deal they couldn't have gotten without ordering millions of units (they also couldn't have gotten it without contacts though). Now they're big enough to make their own orders and even their own chip designs and it's inertia because changing requires a lot of money for new firmware and software changes. Changing would increase device cost for at least a could of cycles. On the x86 front, they're simply never going to get that good of a deal with AMD or Intel.

sitkack 6y ago

Most of this has to do with Linux and not the Pi itself. I use a mac and a linux system side by side, desktop linux is still a tire fire. This is coming from a person who used to run a FreeBSD laptop in the early 2000s.

zeta0134 6y ago
I feel the opposite. Maybe it's a matter of the software I use? I find OSX to be clunky and obtuse, filled with notification spam and weird windowing behavior. Linux desktop (Cinnamon in my case) gets out of my way and let's me work. That said, the Pi _really_ is not up to the task. It can be made usable by booting it from an SSD, but it remains somewhat underpowered and has a lot of trouble running even moderately heavy utilities.
proverbialbunny 6y ago
Maybe it depends on what software you're using? I use both OSX (MBP) and Linux Mint as my desktop. Everything I use works on both. Both are stable and solid and work perfectly. I'm on a 4k60 monitor. The only thing I had to do is have my graphics card do vsync on Linux. Software vsync on Linux is horrible. GPU vsync has Linux runs smooth as butter the same as smooth as OSX. I also had to manually increase my dpi and font sizes to match my monitor.
- sitkack 6y ago
  Do you have unified keyboard navigation inside of text editors across all linux applications? Can you reliably cut and paste between all applications? Can you open the menu items with the keyboard? It could be the applications, but I find to get the smooth OSX experience I need to tweak every single application's preferences, many of which do not have have the required level of control, then I need to resort to xmodmap, etc, this is the path to ruin, rather than modify my system I have to modify myself which hurts but I am ultimately more flexible than software. I have come to the realization that the desktop OS you run doesn't matter, use what works for you. I would absolutely love to run Libre software for everything, but it isn't possible. Maybe someone will create a window manager that also does live binary patching and instrumentation, I am convinced that this is the only way, but by the time that comes, everything will run in the browser anyway.

adarioble 6y ago

With Windows practically giving licenses away, Apple coming with MacOS, cheap chromebooks coming with chromeOS, I really don’t get this “Linux on a desktop move”, especially when it is $75 device + $250 of accessories. That said I love Pi, have it for home automation and media server, amazing piece of tech, NOT a desktop replacement and for the most part it’s not even aiming at that.

jankotek 6y ago
OS with decent and predictable support are not easy to find. Windows can change overnight after a big update. Most devices you mentioned are junk, since ssd is soldered on motherboard.
0x0 6y ago
Where can I get a free Windows license for my Macbook?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Anecdotally, I've found you don't really need one if you're fine with a nag in the bottom right corner.
- nonamenoslogan 6y ago
  Surprisingly enough I've found nearly any Windows 7 or 8's sticker license will work for 10--find any old laptop/desktop with one and you'll have a "free" license.

cannam 6y ago

Although not wrong, and full of interesting details, this is a really puzzling article. It feels a little like writing about how you couldn't get your toaster to boil noodles. (Though not as unsafe.) I use Linux as my main desktop and have always found it very pleasant, but if my main thing was video editing, I wouldn't try to do it with Linux on ARM64 and then grumble when it turned out not to work very well. (Of course what makes the article worth reading is the fact that its author has tried just that, and reported on it. It's an interesting report! It's simply odd that the article seems so disappointed, since surely few readers would have expected any other result.)

unixhero 6y ago
This is because suther of OP is an absolute clueless "technology author".
- Avicebron 6y ago
  He seems to have at least several years of experience working in software on his about page. Not sure if that registers as clueless.
- cannam 6y ago
  That's nonsense, and I'm ashamed to have written a comment that could yield a reply like this. If that is also how my comment reads, then I am sorry. The original article is a good one. The author is obviously not at all clueless. It should be possible to do a day's work on a computer of similar spec to an 8G Raspberry Pi. That the article was puzzling springs, probably, from familiarity with trying to switch from one platform and architecture to another without any help from the OS in terms of emulation or other support. It's hard to do.
0xCMP 6y ago
Video editing was at the bottom of the article after many other problems he encountered. I do not use Linux as my desktop anymore, but I have, and every time I try I run in to all kinds of issues like this.

SloopJon 6y ago

I'm not sure what the author's background is, but if he did all of this in one day as a Mac-using Linux newbie, I'm actually pretty impressed. There are references to previous posts about the Pi, but it's not clear whether he's used Linux as a desktop O/S before. I'm using Ubuntu on a 4 GB Pi for some Docker experiments, because I couldn't get ARM64 images to work on Raspbian. Is Raspbian the best distribution for the desktop, or is there something better for a 4 or 8 GB Pi?

hellcow 6y ago
For what it's worth, I had luck starting with Raspbian, then changing the apt sources to Debian sid (unstable) and upgrading without issues. The default Raspbian desktop environment becomes buggy, but XFCE4 works perfectly. If you want to run Debian on your Pi4, that's a pretty easy path.
mikepurvis 6y ago
He's not all a newbie; among other things he maintains some well regarded Ansible roles for things like deploying Jenkins.
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  I’ve been using Linux on the server side exclusively for years and twice before tried to switch to Ubuntu and Fedora (two separate times during Apple’s butterfly-switch years). So I do have some background but not a PhD in Linux in the Desktop. What I’ve found is that if you’re mostly dealing with programming, dev work, and maybe some more specialized graphics work (not just twiddling with artwork and media using the computer as an artistic tool), almost any Linux desktop may be entirely adequate. But if you do like (somewhat more) consistent UIs and a deep catalog (more than 2 in every category) of very good apps, your much better off in Mac/Windows :( I’d like that to change but just like Fusion energy my excitement will not make it happen any sooner than 20 years from now. (I could’ve said that same thing the first time I tried Red Hat for my workstation (against Windows 3.1) in like 1996...).
  - 6y ago

trynewideas 6y ago

While I get that he wants things to Just Work for things the Pi's not designed to do, that's not the goal or design of the Pi in any sense whatsoever. The hypothesis that a Pi would be feasible for his workflow was set up to fail before he started doing anything.

Apofis 6y ago

This is more of a comparison between MacOS and Linux than a Macbook and a Pi.

KingMachiavelli 6y ago

Many of the issues and personal choices made where due to the jump between a non-linux OS to a Linux OS. Even though the 'default' desktop environment is light weight, a tiling WM just as i3 or dwm would run perfectly on the Pi. Light weight application alternatives such as qutebrowser (instead of Chrome) and Spacemacs (instead of VSCode) would also make using a Pi a lot easier. The lack of 4k@60Hz is pretty annoying altough it actually might not be noticable with a tiling WM due to the lack of animations.

groby_b 6y ago
Given that Macs (at least the good old trashcan) also can't do 4k@60Hz over HDMI, that was the one comparison that struck me as somewhat unfair.
- filoleg 6y ago
  >Macs (at least the good old trashcan) also can't do 4k@60Hz over HDMI I cannot speak for the old trashcan ones (assuming this is a reference to the desktop Mac Pro), but this has not been true for at least the last few generations of Macbook Pro laptops. You just gotta make sure your cable supports HDMI2 and that you aren't using one of those multi-port dongles. Finding a cable/adapter that allows 4k@60hz on macbooks might be tricky though (as evidenced by a lot of threads on the topic I found on reddit and Apple forums). I lucked out, and the first cable I bought (direct USB-C to HDMI, not a dongle) ended up working swimmingly with no issues.
  - codetrotter 6y ago
    Do you have the manufacturer’s name and the model number for that cable, or an Amazon link? I’ve been having some trouble with my MacBook Air and a new monitor that I recently bought, and I suspect that the cheap dongle I am using is partly to blame. In particular, when my MacBook Air goes to sleep, and I then later wake it up, the new external monitor does not turn back on. And to make matters worse, the monitor does not even respond to the on/off button on the monitor in this state. So I then have to physically unplug the monitor power cable, which is damn annoying, because the outlet is hard to get to. Weirdly however, my old monitor had no such problem. I did notice, however, that even though the dongle is for USB-C to HDMI, the MacBook Air thinks that it is connected via DisplayPort. Since I’d already put the old monitor away I didn’t check to see if that used to be the case there as well, but I am thinking that conceivably this could have some connection with the inability of the new monitor to wake up. Right now I am not at home, and haven’t been for a while, but as far as I remember, I ended up telling the MacBook Air to never turn off the monitors. However, that is not a good workaround. The MacBook Air is a 2018 model. The monitor is a Svive 34" Curved Pyx 34C801, with 3440x1440 resolution and up to 144 Hz refresh rate. I also connect my desktop computer to this monitor, which is why I bought a monitor with such high refresh rate since my desktop computer is able to deliver video at such high refresh rate even at full resolution. When only the desktop computer is connected, the monitor wakes as it should when I turn on the desktop computer. But when the MacBook Air is connected, whether alone or alongside the desktop, the MacBook Air can not wake the monitor again after the monitor has been put to sleep by the MacBook Air. So i would like to order a cable like the one you are using and see if that will help me avoid this problem.

jankotek 6y ago

I would strugle the same way on macbook, never used this platform. Pi4 is fairly nice desktop. I use it as a backup workstation while traveling.

Havoc 6y ago

Title seems a little cringey. The 8GB model isn't going to perform much better on these tasks that the 4GB on that has been available forever and the $75 device is not a suitable replacement for a $1,299 device. I do use Jeff's work to determine what SD card to buy...but the above has rattled my confidence a bit.

Avicebron 6y ago
The title is classic click bait, looks like he's good at it since right below it he has a youtube video of the project. It's probably a hustle for some views/ad revenue and not meant to be a serious project where he legitimately thinks he's building a mac in his room.
- Avicebron 6y ago
  EDIT: he's on the front page of HN, guess the bait worked..
- sukilot 6y ago
  At a penny for a thousand views, that doesn't seem a smart play.
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    I don't know his CPM, but a quick google search reveals the average (2018) CPM to be $2.80. I agree not a lot, but hey, worth the passive income probably.
    - geerlingguy 6y ago
      It’s part of a bit of a wide reaching effort to make it possible for me to get all my income from open source work and free ventures. I’m about 25% of the way there. And quick note on YouTube CPMs, they vary a lot by genre. Some of the more popular genres are on the lower end of that spectrum (afaict, based on limited testing). It’s tough because I have a chronic illness and also support a family of five (SAHM, but it seems all parents have been stay at home lately). But as cringey as many in the HN audience may find it, marketing is actually vital to any endeavors success. I try to make it so my work is better than the title suggests, but don’t always succeed. I literally unplugged my MBP and replaced it with a Pi 4 for a day, but that is apparently not literal enough to justify the title ;-)

sloshnmosh 6y ago

It became “The year of the Linux desktop” for me when Windows10 came out. I now use Linux for most everything. I also have 2 MacBook Pros and a MacBook Air but I quickly get frustrated when trying to do anything worthwhile on them and go back to my ancient business class Dell running Linux. YMMV

AdrianB1 6y ago
How is your comment related to the R Pi article?
rnotaro 6y ago
You see, outside of programming, Windows 10 became my main OS when it released. Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.5 were really shitty in my opinon but Windows 10 "saved" Microsoft for me. I have an Edu/Business license and I absolutely love it. Group policies allowed me to avoid all the "auto-updates while doing work" from the start. I never had any issues with Windows 10.
fish45 6y ago
for me it was when I discovered desktop environments and window managers other than gnome/kde. I can't go back to not having so much customization.

war1025 6y ago

Does anyone know how a Pi4 with 8gb ram would hold up compared to a six year old mid-lower tier laptop? It's something I've been curious about for a while and really just waiting for the point where a RaspberryPi-type device is adequate for Facebook / Hackernews / Youtube, which is essentially what I use a laptop for at home.

icecreammatt 6y ago
I just got an 8GB one and it works well enough for YouTube and light browsing but I couldn’t use it as a dedicated machine. Certainly is more snappy than the older ones I have. Just visiting the YouTube home page seems to really be pushing it though.
- war1025 6y ago
  What I am hearing from this is that there are good odds the Pi5 will be a suitable light-duty desktop replacement.
  - icecreammatt 6y ago
    Pretty much, I think it just needs a slightly faster CPU to handle loading JavaScript heavy pages.
    - Narishma 6y ago
      By then the Javascript-heavy pages will probably be even heavier. You'll then be waiting for the Raspberry Pi 6 to run them.
rcarmo 6y ago
The 4GB model can run Chromium and Firefox ESR fast enough for me to use Tweetdeck, access all manner of "work sites" (including O365 webmail), the Azure portal, and code a few things (but I am a heavy vim user and can live inside tmux). I use mine as a thin client, and have been fiddling with an Elementary image for it: https://github.com/rcarmo/elementary-os-unofficial https://github.com/rcarmo/elementary-os-unofficial (mine currently doesn't install correctly, but should take a couple more days to fix). YouTube is... passable. What really helps is booting from an SSD -- although my Acer Celeron is still faster.

kvothe_ 6y ago

Next article: I replaced my car with Raspberry Pi... didn't work out. hmmmmmmm.

mark_l_watson 6y ago

When I first bought a RPi, I used it exclusively for writing and coding for several days. Worked OK, so I was surprised about the whining in the article.

somehnguy 6y ago
There is a big difference between working OK and working in a pleasant to use manner. Every time I've ever tried to use Linux as my daily driver it has worked OK. But it has never been pleasant to use and as such I never stick with it for too long.
- mark_l_watson 6y ago
  I usually use a MacBook but I also use a beefed up System76 laptop with a good GPU, i7, and double the memory. Things like large Haskell builds, anything using TensorFlow, etc. runs so much faster than my MacBook there is no comparison. Everyone gets to choose their own setup, but to be honest, if I didn't like my Apple Mac+Watch+iPhone+iPad interop so much, I would always use the much faster Linux system. At my old job, I had the fastest current MacBook Pro configuration and it was much slower than my System76 rig.
  - geerlingguy 6y ago
    If I could customize my Mac like I could with a PC build (mmm more cores in a Threadripper without a $10K Mac Pro minimum...), I would definitely not be using a laptop today :(

rvz 6y ago

Well, I guess running all those favourite Electron apps simultaneously on the Pi wouldn't be a wise thing to do since it would still grind to a slow and painful halt. I would just spare the Raspberry Pi from this Electron app stress testing torture as it evidently cannot handle many of them running at the same time.

varjag 6y ago

Coming up next: AtTiny13 vs Dell PowerEdge.

wysewun 6y ago

I admire how knowledgeable Jeff is in different subject matters. Jeff is a major contributor in the ansible community and very helpful to everyone.

eeZah7Ux 6y ago

And yet many years ago I was using Debian on a laptop with 32MB of RAM. I was using the "Awesome" lightweight desktop and spending 99% of the time in the terminal. SSH to work on remote servers, Vim for development, git, IRC, text email, man and less for documentation (installed locally), rsync. Occasional browsing with Dillo. Believe me or not, I miss the productivity of not being forced to use tons of stuff in browser.

teleforce 6y ago
This. I'm not sure how many more years people will eventually realize that web is originally invented for sharing documents over the decentralized internet and not really suited for other type of applications. The proliferation of app-over-web is really pushing it including the online web based video editing [1]. Off course the online companies are loving the status quo since they can sell us advertisements and perhaps our data as well in exchange for online free software, or the dreaded "pay-forever" subscription based software. I agree it's really convenient to go gung-ho all-web but how long can you survive by continuously eating fast food diets? With cheap off-the-shelf multi-core CPU (latest 64 cores/128 threads), terabytes SSD, and terabytes RAM (including the new Optane non volatile memory) the modern laptop/PC is even more powerful than twenty years ago supercomputer [2]. I hope that native applications will make a comeback with the increasing popularity of the compiled programming languages. The internet and cloud are only being used for synchronizing and versioning the application's data over multiple devices rather then online data processing due to inherent limitations of remote bandwidth and latency that's not suited for majority of desktop applications. [1]https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/best-video-editors/ https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/best-video-editors/ [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Origin_2000 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Origin_2000

kevinsimper 6y ago

Don't the Raspberry Pi 4 support 4kp60?

Narishma 6y ago
I think it does but only on 1 monitor.
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  Correct, you need to toggle a setting in the boot config, and your HDMI cable and monitor both have to support HDMI 2.0

andolanra 6y ago

I'm not sure why the conclusion is, "Linux on the Desktop isn't possible," when the big blocker the author had was pretty consistently finding and installing software compatible with a small ARM64 machine. (That's not to say it's not a valid conclusion to draw in general: just that it's a bit of a non-sequitur for this article.)

Jtsummers 6y ago
> "Linux on the Desktop isn't possible" That's not his conclusion. This is: > So, in summary, would I recommend the Pi 4 as a worthy general computer for anyone? Definitely no. Would I recommend it as a worthy general computer for a certain subset of computer users. Definitely yes!
- andolanra 6y ago
  This is literally the last paragraph of the post: > But, sadly, I don't think this year is the 'Year of the Linux desktop'. In general, I think 'Linux on the Desktop' for a mainstream audience is always going to be 20 years away, just like nuclear fusion.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    Again, that’s not the same as “it isn’t possible”.
geerlingguy 6y ago
I didn’t say that. I said the fabled “year of the Linux desktop” is a long ways off, in terms of being a potential option for the vast audience of users who currently own a Mac or Windows computer.
- wazoox 6y ago
  But the vast audience wouldn't use such an ARM64 machine for that and won't have these problems. The audio problems for instance that you encountered with all applications are obviously related to the hardware, not Linux. Even on my weird desktop running slackware I run Zoom, Jit.si, Cheese, Skype, etc without any problem. It's precisely the other way around, I've seen several articles recently about the fact that Linux adoption on the desktop has soared rapidly, and you see Lenovo and Dell supporting Linux on a large number of machines nowadays. The only thing you showed is that there is no desktop-grade ARM64 Linux machine available.

paines 6y ago

Cool write up/experiment, and I can feel the pain with Linux and Sound issues. A few days ago I had a job interview and they used MS Teams. At first I was completly blown aways that there is a native linux app. For the first 5 minutes I tried to get sound input working but gave up. Luckily once you press the invite link, you can also choose to join via browser, and then sound input worked directly as expected.

skykooler 6y ago

I'm amazed that, given how long video editors have been around, there isn't something better than OpenShot or Kdenlive; I would have expected that someone would be working on the video equivalent of Gimp/Audacity/etc.

tartoran 6y ago
Did you try ShotCut?

adamredwoods 6y ago

I remember when people were trying to do day-to-day work on their smartphones, then the iPad came out and they started to work on those, which eventually led to the iPad Pro and Microsoft Surface Pro and now fully capable of doing day-to-day work on it. Keeping pushing the boundaries!

adarioble 6y ago
With the slight difference that any of these boundaries pushers (never did) cost $75. Not now not then.

rubatuga 6y ago

The author is right, none of these problems exist on macOS, and if you want the year of the Linux desktop to finally come, it will have to solve all of the issues highlighted. The commenters aren't going to be there to defend the true use-cases of "ARM Linux Desktop" to the end-user, so expect them to be completely turned off by this experience.

wazoox 6y ago
None of these problems exist on my XPS running Ubuntu, either. Of course when going to a 75$ not-desktop-grade machine from a $1500 Mac you'll find some compromises along the way. That comment doesn't make the slightest sense, frankly.
at_a_remove 6y ago
I remember saying in 2000 to someone that Linux cannot simultaneously have a reputation as "elite" and being for hackers and also have its Year of the Desktop. Of course, we ask so much more of desktops now than when I was running a beta of NT 5, so I think all of the goalposts have moved (or perhaps a rising tide has lifted many boats). Still, whenever I try to set up a machine that is the equivalent of my "not very thinking hard, screwing around with my brain off" Windows setup, I keep coming across this friction, a drag to any momentum I develop. I think the issues are multiple, complex, and fairly entrenched. It's a shame because I would like to be able to set up machines for friends that are familiar, easy to use, and so forth, but my occasional efforts have been stymied.

julianeon 6y ago

If you have a teeny-tiny amount of money - like, $75, the cost of a Pi - and you want to get the best work computer/laptop and developer experience you can, for your buck - you'd be dumb to buy a Pi. Instead, get a used laptop - say, a Thinkpad. Install Linux on it. There you go: the best computer you can get, performance-wise, for $75.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

mickw 6y ago

If the author did all of this in one day as a OSX/Linux novice, hat's off! Took me a good bit of playing around to get fluid using Linux for the first time

hidiegomariani 6y ago

The only purpose I could see raspberry pi in, is as a development env where you can ssh into and do work as a pure Linux kernel. If I was to use an arm desktop full time it would be microsoft surface pro x (although with its quirks) having much more support and apps Also Apple is planning to move MacBook line to arm although time will tell whether that will work out or not. In the meanwhile we might need to stick to x86 architectures for a while

ArtWomb 6y ago

Related: Building a Raspberry Pi Cluster https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/build-a-raspberry-pi-cluster-computer https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/build-a-raspberry-pi-... And: Raspberry Pi Vulkan Driver Makes Progress But Long Road Remains https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi-Vulkan-Summer-2020 https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi... I had no idea til this week the RP4-B had dual 4k hdmi output. And I love the idea of a cluster for testing microservices. But regarding graphics performance I think I would opt for NVidia's Jetson Nano.

ex3ndr 6y ago

I didn't get what's wrong with H.264 since it present in every pi even on pi zero.

geerlingguy 6y ago
If you don’t add the right options to FFmpeg it can’t take advantage of the CPU acceleration, I believe.

MintelIE 6y ago

I've been using a Pi 4 4GB as a desktop for a couple months now. Considering that my other main computer is an ancient Thinkpad, I don't feel hampered by the speed. I used a Pi 3B for a desktop replacement for a while and while it was fine with my typical use (emacs+mostly command line) "modern" browsing was uncomfortably slow. It was perfectly capable of video playback in standard formats but there are problem sites using codecs which are not supported by the media decoder in the Pi. The situation with the Pi 4 is quite similar but it's just about fast enough for Youtube now. Most any school or office could switch to the Pi 4 seamlessly these days for sure though.

libx 6y ago

I feel the same pain. Sound is a problem in my x86_64 Linux. One of the sound cards doesn't work anymore, don't know what happened. But if I pass it through to a Windows virtual machine with virt-manager, it works! So many problems for the desktop, that come almost day in day out that I'm considering trying Haiku OS for the desktop. Just need something that works.

salawat 6y ago
I have the feeling that between graphics and sound processing there is just a dearth of material about how the underlying mechanisms that drive that portion of computing actually work. At least, I haven't really the magic words to represent "For God sake, what do I have to line up to make this stiff work" yet. It's front and center of this decades computing goals for me. To that end, I've been looking into things like how X actually works, actually making use of graphics processing hardware, and the like. If anyone has some good reading, I'd love to know.

ngcc_hk 6y ago

The other article on Apple switch to arm might help. Those software on mac are on arm. You have now some video editing software on ipad that works well. The question is which is the next winter, AppleArm or ...

osdoorp 6y ago

I Replaced My MacBook Pro with a Cat for a Day

sloshnmosh 6y ago
I tried that too but my cat had trouble interfacing with the mouse. (Sorry)

hofstee 6y ago

I can't even get WiFi working on my Pi 4. I can only resolve IPv6, anything IPv4 fails. I suspect it's a router issue but I have no control over that, so I simply can't use the Pi.

Andys 6y ago

Tangentially, I permanently replaced my Raspberry Pi with an x86 Upboard and it is just so much nicer to use and not really that expensive, though there are some high end models https://up-shop.org/ https://up-shop.org/

sitzkrieg 6y ago

great choice for those looking to waste time

wltprgm 6y ago

Since people are so disappointed with ARM64 video/audio viewing/recording/editing applications, they should write their own and contribute to Linux ARM64 and stop complaining RISC V on FPGA sucks, I wouldn't use it either