> The Raspberry Pi isn't competing with a microcontroller. They're on opposite ends of the computing spectrum. The spectrum is wider than that, but if you're c

> The Raspberry Pi isn't competing with a microcontroller. They're on opposite ends of the computing spectrum. The spectrum is wider than that, but if you're comparing Pi and MCUs, today you have 32 bit multi-core ARM microcontrollers that run at hundreds of MHz and make a 486 look wimpy. And for a microprocessor, the first gen Pi is pretty darn wimpy (wikipedia compares it to a 300MHz Pentium II). Yet the performance difference between a first gen Pi and a Pi 4 is absolutely massive. That's what I mean by the awkward space. Yes it's still faster than a high end microcontroller, but if I need an application running on modern Linux, chances are I don't want to deploy it on Pentium II class hardware except in very niche circumstances. So it's neither a microcontroller, nor is it a decent microprocessor for modern OS. It's about right in the middle of the spectrum where it kinda sucks for any application that can be implemented on a microcontroller and sucks for anything that needs a "real computer". I need to point out that I actually work as an embedded software developer in this space where we have high end microcontrollers running a custom RTOS and applications that offer largely the same functionality and interfaces that we also implement using low end Linux-capable ARM solutions; what you can implement on a microcontroller is a heck of a lot, but Linux capable chips have gotten cheap and using them sometimes saves development effort on the driver & application stack. There's plenty of overlap, they're totally not opposite ends of the spectrum.