6 ms·

I run a Raspberry Pi 4b, recently upgraded from a 3b+, and I believe that a lot of personal computing could (and maybe should) be run on them. They're quiet, en

I run a Raspberry Pi 4b, recently upgraded from a 3b+, and I believe that a lot of personal computing could (and maybe should) be run on them. They're quiet, energy efficient, and you could probably run them on a battery if you needed it. I wouldn't run VMs on it, but I do run docker on it, and that works just fine.

iagovar 6y ago
But it's ARM and that poses some problems. For example, you can't put windows into it, and some of my apps are Windows. Also, RDP. I still hope for something so smooth in Linux, using console meanwhile.
- ben-schaaf 6y ago
  It's not officially supported, but you can get windows to run on a Pi 4.
  - jmnicolas 6y ago
    If you're speaking about Windows IOT, it's clearly not production ready (and not compatible with the PI4 AFAIK). I did some tests on a RPI3 a year or 2 ago and showing some scrolling test in a UWP app was making the whole machine lag and be unresponsive.
- Tiksi 6y ago
  In my experience XDMCP/X11 forwarding works reasonably well, as long as your network is fairly quick and reliable.
silicon2401 6y ago
what's uptime like on an Rpi? I want to start working on a home website and have an old rpi laying around. But I've read that their reliability isn't great since they use SD cards. Any advice?
- mxuribe 6y ago
  I don't have numbers, stats handy but in my couple of years experience with Rpis - both regulars and the smaller Ws - the SD cards fail well before the Rpis do.
- kokx 6y ago
  What I've done with my RPi 4 is attach an external SSD to it and mount it to /home and /var. This reduces writes to the SD card dramatically. Lengthening the SD card's life. I have serious uptime on it, almost a year (since I got an RPi 4 basically). It only shutdown with power failures (only one, which was entirely my own fault) and system maintenance (OS upgrades and other tinkering). I've also imaged a version of that SD card, so it would be easy to just swap out and probably get things running again without much hassle. I'm sure there are more fancy solutions with overlayfs, making the SD card read-only except for upgrades. Though I couldn't find a nice resource on it at the time.
  - silicon2401 6y ago
    Interesting solution, I'll take note of this. Thanks!
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Very long if you're careful to not write to the SD card too much. Mine got turned off mostly when I accidentally unplugged it from my desk.
- ezconnect 6y ago
  If you are not using the camera, it can run for years.
- atomi 6y ago
  My rPi3, running Arch, has an up time of close to 3 years on the same SD card. It runs various Docker containers including 1 for MiniFlux. It's mostly idle but when I need it, it's been reliably there for me. Maybe, I've been lucky.
- magicalhippo 6y ago
m463 6y ago
two things: 1) I think the pi is not particularly power efficient. I got this impression from this (old) article: https://www.bitwizard.nl/wiki/Reducing_power_consumption_of_a_raspberry_Pi https://www.bitwizard.nl/wiki/Reducing_power_consumption_of_... 2) I think the pi would benefit from a more robust filesytem layout such as an overlay filesystem to allow continuous writes to /var to go to ramdisk. Openwrt has a layout like this and it prevents flash from being burned out and prevents most problems if power is abruptly lost.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  > I think the pi is not particularly power efficient. While there might be efficiency gains available, RPIs use a very small amount of power compared to a laptop. Idling a RPI4 uses 2.8 watts[0], which not only rates favorably compared to most laptops, but is far below what my charging cell phone uses. Maxed out my RPI can only hit 15W, since that's the maximum power that my official USB C adapter can output. Now that being said, it does depend on what kind of load you're expecting to handle. If you're constantly maxing out a RPI, it is probably more energy efficient to purchase a larger server than to just keep adding RPIs. But if you're staying well below the theoretical max of a RPI, it'll consume far less than a used laptop. > I think the pi would benefit from a more robust filesytem layout such as an overlay filesystem to allow continuous writes to /var to go to ramdisk. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of the RPI; microSD cards cannot handle a ton of writes without frying. I've settled on using log2ram to ensure that logs are only periodically flushed from RAM to the SD card, to extend the lifespan of my cards.
  - sosborn 6y ago
    Booting to USB is an option.
- knorker 6y ago
  Depends what you mean by power efficient. Watts per low traffic website it's very efficient. CPU is generally not pegged at 100%. For watts per CPU cycle not as much, I agree. Say it takes 10W at full power (I've not measured). That makes it 1/10th of a normal CPU. But it's like 30-40 times slower.

iagovar 6y ago

But it's ARM and that poses some problems. For example, you can't put windows into it, and some of my apps are Windows. Also, RDP. I still hope for something so smooth in Linux, using console meanwhile.

ben-schaaf 6y ago
It's not officially supported, but you can get windows to run on a Pi 4.
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  If you're speaking about Windows IOT, it's clearly not production ready (and not compatible with the PI4 AFAIK). I did some tests on a RPI3 a year or 2 ago and showing some scrolling test in a UWP app was making the whole machine lag and be unresponsive.
Tiksi 6y ago
In my experience XDMCP/X11 forwarding works reasonably well, as long as your network is fairly quick and reliable.

silicon2401 6y ago

what's uptime like on an Rpi? I want to start working on a home website and have an old rpi laying around. But I've read that their reliability isn't great since they use SD cards. Any advice?

mxuribe 6y ago
I don't have numbers, stats handy but in my couple of years experience with Rpis - both regulars and the smaller Ws - the SD cards fail well before the Rpis do.
kokx 6y ago
What I've done with my RPi 4 is attach an external SSD to it and mount it to /home and /var. This reduces writes to the SD card dramatically. Lengthening the SD card's life. I have serious uptime on it, almost a year (since I got an RPi 4 basically). It only shutdown with power failures (only one, which was entirely my own fault) and system maintenance (OS upgrades and other tinkering). I've also imaged a version of that SD card, so it would be easy to just swap out and probably get things running again without much hassle. I'm sure there are more fancy solutions with overlayfs, making the SD card read-only except for upgrades. Though I couldn't find a nice resource on it at the time.
- silicon2401 6y ago
  Interesting solution, I'll take note of this. Thanks!
ashtonkem 6y ago
Very long if you're careful to not write to the SD card too much. Mine got turned off mostly when I accidentally unplugged it from my desk.
ezconnect 6y ago
If you are not using the camera, it can run for years.
atomi 6y ago
My rPi3, running Arch, has an up time of close to 3 years on the same SD card. It runs various Docker containers including 1 for MiniFlux. It's mostly idle but when I need it, it's been reliably there for me. Maybe, I've been lucky.
magicalhippo 6y ago

m463 6y ago

two things: 1) I think the pi is not particularly power efficient. I got this impression from this (old) article: https://www.bitwizard.nl/wiki/Reducing_power_consumption_of_a_raspberry_Pi https://www.bitwizard.nl/wiki/Reducing_power_consumption_of_... 2) I think the pi would benefit from a more robust filesytem layout such as an overlay filesystem to allow continuous writes to /var to go to ramdisk. Openwrt has a layout like this and it prevents flash from being burned out and prevents most problems if power is abruptly lost.

ashtonkem 6y ago
> I think the pi is not particularly power efficient. While there might be efficiency gains available, RPIs use a very small amount of power compared to a laptop. Idling a RPI4 uses 2.8 watts[0], which not only rates favorably compared to most laptops, but is far below what my charging cell phone uses. Maxed out my RPI can only hit 15W, since that's the maximum power that my official USB C adapter can output. Now that being said, it does depend on what kind of load you're expecting to handle. If you're constantly maxing out a RPI, it is probably more energy efficient to purchase a larger server than to just keep adding RPIs. But if you're staying well below the theoretical max of a RPI, it'll consume far less than a used laptop. > I think the pi would benefit from a more robust filesytem layout such as an overlay filesystem to allow continuous writes to /var to go to ramdisk. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of the RPI; microSD cards cannot handle a ton of writes without frying. I've settled on using log2ram to ensure that logs are only periodically flushed from RAM to the SD card, to extend the lifespan of my cards.
- sosborn 6y ago
  Booting to USB is an option.
knorker 6y ago
Depends what you mean by power efficient. Watts per low traffic website it's very efficient. CPU is generally not pegged at 100%. For watts per CPU cycle not as much, I agree. Say it takes 10W at full power (I've not measured). That makes it 1/10th of a normal CPU. But it's like 30-40 times slower.