16 ms·

I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

171 points by rambambram 4y ago

giuliomagnifico 4y ago
> I use a Raspberry Pi 4 (with 8GB of RAM) as my daily desktop computer. I browse the internet, read and send e-mails, program software, edit photos, create images, watch Youtube videos and play games on it. Without any significant problems. Yes for those lite tasks is fine, and you can also save some watts. The things are different when you want to do audio/video/photo production.
- rambambram 4y ago
  Of course! But I still was positively surprised that GIMP, Youtube and even Kdenlive worked flawlessly on the thing.
  - jerf 4y ago
    Yeah. "Production", implying a high standard of professional quality using a base of uncompressed 4K or 8K might be a bad idea, sure, or trying to run a live event with half-a-dozen input streams and live streaming back out to the internet. But plenty of uses of video editing would still be perfectly possible on an RPi4. It might be noticeably faster on a "real" desktop, but it would be perfectly doable, especially if you were working in less than 1080P for some reason, like a DVD source video.
    - anthk 4y ago
      A DVD resolution can be handled for edition even under a Pentium III or a Rasbperry B+.
  - doubled112 4y ago
    It has been a few years, but I used to do all of these things (GIMP, YouTube, Kdenlive) on a Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM Why wouldn't they work on a Pi 4 with higher specs?
    - anthk 4y ago
      4k and 8k video. With 720p OFC a G4 macbook or some bumped up dual Pentium III with Cinelerra/Cinepaint under Linux and a Geforce 3 was more than enough.
    - rambambram 4y ago
      I don't know, but still, I was surprised. Maybe I do know and it has to do with software bloat? I don't find it hard to believe that the software you ran on your Pentium was less bloated somehow.
- rr888 4y ago
  > audio/video/photo production No one I know does this. The biggest problem for me is to use our corporate remote desktop you need spyware that only works on Windows and Mac.
  - jcelerier 4y ago
    This is wild, huge majority of people I know personally who use computers want to do at least one of these things once in a while. Or if not this, some CAD work, 3d modeling, and other computationally expensive things
    - contracertainty 4y ago
      I'm gonna second gp, I don't know anyone who does photo/video editing, cad/cam or 3D modeling. In fact, I know more people with > 3 pi's than I do coders. People love them and use them for all sorts. But I don't know anyone who does any of those things.
    - adrian_b 4y ago
      I agree with you, but all those tasks alternate with many hours during which a personal computer is used only for reading and editing documents, or Internet browsing, or audio listening or video watching. For the latter activities, a computer bigger than an Intel NUC or similar computers is never needed. I do CAD work, compilation of large software projects and other tasks that need a fast computer, but I do these on a couple of big tower servers, which I wake up only when necessary. As a PC, I use an Intel NUC, but now there are more alternatives to it than ever, e.g. there are several models of small computers with AMD Rembrandt Ryzen 6000 CPUs. The NUC-like computers are faster than the cheap laptops having the same CPUs and they also have a much more complete set of peripheral ports. I frequently see comments that there are laptops which are cheaper than the NUC-like computers, but those cheap laptops are typically garbage that I would not use even if I would receive them for free. A laptop comparable in performance, versatility and reliability with a $1000 NUC-like computer may cost $3000 or more.
- abudabi123 4y ago
  On the RasPi4 8GB there is this 4MB jpeg file that crashes Krita but will render slowly in Falkon. https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/150000/150427/ian_oli_2022271_lrg.jpg https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/150000/15...
naikrovek 4y ago
about their previous computers: > After a while it felt as if a fighter jet was taking off next to me, constantly. as someone who spent time around jets in the US Air Force, I absolutely loathe this analogy. The difference between a few computer fans and a jet taking off is like the difference in force between a dead leaf falling on you from 10m above you versus a 25kg anvil falling on you from 10m above you. computer fans are annoying, sure. being 6ft away from a jet engine during takeoff will result in permanent and severe damage to your hearing, if not complete loss of hearing.
- denysvitali 4y ago
  The Macbook Pro 2019 gets close to that though :D
- wccrawford 4y ago
  The world is inundated with these over-the-top analogies now. People can't exaggerate just a little, they have to go full nuclear. And when dealing with a lot of sensitive subjects, it negatively affects a lot of people. I'm looking forward to a generation that swings the other way and goes super-literal on everything.
  - ejb999 4y ago
    ..that and 'it looks like a war zone' analogy after every storm. Unless you have actually been in an active war zone, you probably shouldn't use that particular analogy either.
  - drivers99 4y ago
    Aren’t “inundated” and “full nuclear” exaggerations too?
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      Maybe it was an attempt at humour? Like, "If I've told you once, I've told you a million times - don't exaggerate!"
    - 4y ago
checkyoursudo 4y ago
I cannot buy a Pi 4 (8GB) locally at all. Amazon appears to offer one for 200-250 euros. For 200 euros or less, I can get a NUC-style mini PC at my local electronics store that is more powerful. I wouldn't mind trying out a Pi-as-a-PC, but new models either just aren't available or aren't reasonably priced.
- rwaksmunski 4y ago
  Yeah I bought a used Lenovo M720q NUC style 6 core i5-8400T 16Gb Ram 512Gb NVMe machine for less than a new Pi 4 8Gb. With a windows 10 pro license. Makes one hell of a home server.
- nextos 4y ago
  I use an old NUC with a i5-4250U CPU on an Akasa fanless case and it's pretty great. One of the tricks is to run a very thin and simple stack to get really low latency. No compositor, no DE, just a WM and X. And Ethernet. It copes with Google Meet or MS Teams just fine, as well as any light development. I do all heavy lifting by SSHing to a huge workstation. There are lots of nice options if one wants to purchase a brand new fanless desktop: Cirrus7, Tranquil, CompuLab, etc. And of course, fancy DIY with e.g. a Streacom case.
  - anthk 4y ago
    In my case I use a NUC but with Gnome with Wayland , NixOS and a Xanmod kernel (multimedia/rt/input optimized throughput) with some blobs purged. No desktop effects. On the netbook, OpenBSD with cwm+xterm+gnufont+tmux plus mpv,gv,mupdf,nsxiv and sometimes links -g and a forked dillo. On SSH, I don't care even if I use wireless: I use Mosh and the remote server it's handled either by Tmux or Screen. The latency on both are comparable.
- mpalczewski 4y ago
  I bought a used nuc computer on eBay for less than $100 recently. It’s much more powerful than a pi. Used computers are some of the best bargains now.
- yrgulation 4y ago
12tvende 4y ago
Damn what IDE do you use? What games do you play?
- eddieroger 4y ago
  Both of those are specialized use cases by most people's definitions. For most of the uses of normal people, "daily use" is a good web browser and maybe a mail client, and the Pi should be more than capable of running those. A Pi is hardly a gaming rig or a dev box, and I don't think anyone would claim it is.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    That said, Emacs and Vim run fine on a Pi. :)
    - anthk 4y ago
      I run nvi+tmux under an OpenBSD netbook for C/AWK and Perl (sometimes TCL). If flies. No SSD. On gaming, I prefer Nethack/Slashem, IF and retroemulation. Or not, with Scummmvm. I can always use the NUC at the living for games such as Jedi Academy or Jedi Outcast.
- mmcallister 4y ago
  (n)vim would work a real treat on a pi. Building locally might be tricky depending on the codebase, but it's not entirely unreasonable to expect to have a full fledged IDE on a pi (except Android development, lol)
- rambambram 4y ago
  I just use the text editor that comes with Ubuntu Mate, it's called Pluma. I only play Mahjong and Solitaire on the thing. So nothing advanced compared to modern day capabilities. I only ask things from my RPi that I know it can perform, so with my software needs I had to adapt to this piece of hardware as well. I'm just surprised it held so well for over a year now.
- akho 4y ago
jerf 4y ago
Running on reduced power is not even close to hard, what with the powerful monstrosities our modern systems are. The only really tricky bit is to not try to push too much stuff through the graphics pipelines (higher res graphics is effectively O(n^2) as resolution increases), or use code that gets too clever spending lots of CPU for marginal stuff like pretty animations or something. An RPi4 is comfortably more powerful than anything I had prior to 2010, and if you've got decent solid state storage on it you could argue even past that. It really ought to be snappy and very effective, for everything except maybe the web browser, and that's more the fault of bloated web sites than the computer or the browser in my opinion. This ought to be nothing special, just what people expect.
- rambambram 4y ago
  True. And that's why I realized again today why I'm so positively surprised by the fact that the RPi actually _can_ do all of the (basic) stuff I want from my desktop computer.
eric4smith 4y ago
Linux is just “almost” there. I could probably use it for my daily programming environment - Elixir, PostgreSQL, Vim, Firefox. But then my job takes a turn… creative. Document manipulation, convert multiple Images into a PDF, easy screenshots and then make a thumbnail with that. Sign docs with my signature. Access to apps like Pixemator. Share files easily. Dropbox. It’s just easier and more productive. It’s hard to not have Mac Preview when you need it. And that’s why I can’t finally switch over to Linux. An no, Gimp is not an alternative. Dropbox alternatives are just more difficult to use. Just so many little things are missing. To be fair, windows does not have a tool like Preview and that’s why I can’t use windows either.
- nso 4y ago
  Check out Windows 11s new Peek feature
  - joshuaissac 4y ago
    Is it that different from the existing 'Preview pane' in Windows Explorer? https://www.windowslatest.com/2022/04/07/windows-11-is-getting-a-nifty-macos-feature-quick-view/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2022/04/07/windows-11-is-getti... https://www.zubairalexander.com/blog/preview-pane-a-cool-new-feature-in-windows-vista/ https://www.zubairalexander.com/blog/preview-pane-a-cool-new...
- BeefWellington 4y ago
  I do literally all of those things but Mac Preview.
- Latty 4y ago
  Dropbox has (and as far as I'm aware, always has had) full Linux support?
- sevenf0ur 4y ago
  Flameshot is dope for screenshots. Gimp can be tough for beginners. I always fumble around before watching a tutorial. Can be annoying having to watch a tutorial just to change the color of a layer.
adhoc_slime 4y ago
you could do a lot of things to reduce fan noise in your computer, but I appreciate this perspective. We constantly over-estimate how powerful a machine we need (probably because of the bad software we run) and underestimate how versatile and powerful a small SBC can be.
akeck 4y ago
I use both a NUC Debian server and an 8GB Rpi. I've been pleasantly surprised how much day-to-day stuff I get done on pi lately.
forinti 4y ago
I recently bought an Android TV Box (Quad-core, 4GB of RAM) just to see if I could use it as a remote terminal. I turns out to be quite practical and fast. The only gotcha is that DNS doesn't work on the VPN and I have to log on to my company computer via its IP. My feeling is that any little quad-core SBC with 8GB of RAM would be quite adequate for remote work and maybe most of my home needs.
ch_123 4y ago
That NextCube-esque case is nice, might get one for myself :)
lygten 4y ago
Ive used a RPi4 4GB as my only computer for well over a year, without any issues. I use my VPS via SSH for any heavy coding tasks. Libre Office, Claws email suit my everyday needs. I’d also like to my get my hands on the 8GB Pi4 version. In theses times of expensive electricity bills, I can have the pi running all day.
- rambambram 4y ago
  I always wondered how the 4GB version would perform for my use case! What OS do you run?
josefresco 4y ago
This is nice but I can't even buy one! I've been "casually" shopping for a Raspberry Pi for a while now and it seems almost impossible without assistance from a bot, or immense effort.
- rambambram 4y ago
  True. I was lucky enough to already have one. I recently tried to find another one here in The Netherlands. Usually they're out of stock but can be backordered.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- SyneRyder 4y ago
  Would you consider a Pi 400, the model with the C64-like keyboard? They still seem to be available, and seem ideal for the daily computer use-case. Though I guess the difference between 4GB & 8GB RAM is significant.
  - josefresco 4y ago
    I'll consider it (for myself), but I'd rather have just the board as I was looking to gift two to my nephews. Someone else pointed me to CanaKit which does have kits for sale (and in stock) that include the individual components: https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-4-extreme-aluminum-case-kit.html https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-4-extreme-aluminum-case...
- anaganisk 4y ago
  canakit for 2GB and 8GB version seems to be always in stock if you are okay with buying the extreme kit.
- doublepg23 4y ago
  I set up an RSS-to-Telegram bot on fly.io connected to this feed https://rpilocator.com/ https://rpilocator.com/ and it helped my buddies get a bunch.
hwc 4y ago
If someone would build a Linux-friendly competetor to the ARM64 Mac Mini, I would consider that for my home computer. As it is, I either have to stick with x86_64, go to Apple, or have an under-powered RPi.
- easygenes 4y ago
  Ironically, the Microsoft ARM Developer Kit that was just released might be a good option. [1] I also personally have used a Qualcomm RB5 [2][3] since last year and can say that it is quite snappy, though the official image is ancient and the modern Debian Linux image Linaro works on for it was still rather buggy. The most robust option is likely Nvidia's AGX Orin Developer Kit [4][5], which Nvidia maintains 20.04 Ubuntu images for [6]. 1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-dev-kit-2023/94K0P67W7581 2: https://developer.qualcomm.com/qualcomm-robotics-rb5-kit 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RArzm3h_0vg 4: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded-systems/jetson-orin/ 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFgsOeHMAW4 6: https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/jetson-linux
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    With 4 big Cortex-X1 cores and 4 medium Cortex-A78 cores, the new MS Developer Kit should be much faster than the Qualcomm RB5, which has 4 Cortex-A77 cores. Also the price, at $600, is decent in comparison with the excessive prices requested by NVIDIA for the faster of the Orin variants. Unfortunately, the new MS Developer Kit also includes a Microsoft Pluton, and it is very likely that Pluton is configured to allow only Windows to boot. Otherwise, I would have also been tempted by it, because all the previous ARM-based alternatives have been either very slow, like Raspberry Pi, or very expensive in comparison with the computers with Intel or AMD CPUs having similar performance, like the Qualcomm and NVIDIA development kits.
    - easygenes 4y ago
      The Lenovo X13s is basically a laptop version of the new dev kit, and it seems people are running Linux on it successfully [1][2], so hopefully they haven't done anything different with the dev kit. 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/vh1xse/setup_linux_on_x13s_snapdragon_thinkpad_megathread/ 2: https://youtu.be/YWRbNogRBTw&t=1755
talkingtab 4y ago
I use a Raspberry Pi 4/8G as my maine (ha ha) development machine. I have a special case, which is that I mostly ssh into my websites hosted by digital ocean. I usually have several terminal sessions (+3), some local terminal sessions and firefox. I use the pi mainly because I can have two monitors at once. I just installed ubuntu 22.10 desktop and it appears to work well. I use ubuntu mainely because it is what I run on my remote systems and as long as "it just works" locally then I don't have to deal with many differences between the systems. The best thing I did was to have it boot from a cheap kingston 120GB ssd ($18 now). Makes a world of difference in speed. My biggest complaint is that firefox is a little slow on the uptake, I am usually debugging some web interaction with developer tools and once the page is up it is as fast as I need. I don't play games, I don't edit videos (haven't tried) or other things. Key take-away: for development
- rambambram 4y ago
  > The best thing I did was to have it boot from a cheap kingston 120GB ssd ($18 now). Makes a world of difference in speed. Nice. I also want to try this, just to get the most speed and performance out of it, without giving in reliability or durability. I should also check out Jeff Geerling's comparison of different MicroSD cards for the RPi.
  - happyhardcore 4y ago
    I started out using a cheap MicroSD and it only lasted a week or two before failing; I've since replaced it with a 128 GB SATA SSD with a USB3-SATA dongle I bought off Amazon. No SD card needed and it's served me incredibly well. I figured that even the best MicroSD card isn't going to be designed to run as a computer's boot drive, and SATA SSDs are cheap and plentiful.
    - rambambram 4y ago
      I should definitely look into this, thanks!
  - justin66 4y ago
404mm 4y ago
If it works for you than that’s all what matters. If you want a quiet computer without the HW configuration constrains of single board with no slots, I recommend older HP EliteDesk G2 (or newer) 35W SFF. You can get them for about the same price as RPi 4/8GB and they have the option of M.2 SSD and ram expansion. The fan is down to minimal RPM (imo not even audible) and it stays cool. I have been using these for my home servers for years. Just like you, I cannot stand the noise of fans and these are sitting directly behind me and are completely quiet. Even with the slowest cpu options (i3), the performance is in multiples of Pi)
- indigodaddy 4y ago
  Confirmed I bought 2 HP EliteDesk G2 within the last two years and they really are great for a non-gaming workstation or server. Both under $135. One was an I5-4590 and the other an I7-4770T (both 4th gen and generally capable CPUs), both with 16G ram and an SSD. One had no OS, however the onboard license allowed me to install Win 10 Pro without any issue. Obviously these are also great for throwing Linux onto.
christkv 4y ago
Steam deck is a good option as well and you have great control out of the box of power draw.
- brnt 4y ago
  Although Pi's aren't obtainable for $35 anymore, a Deck is in a different price category. I prefer used SFF machines.
  - Sirened 4y ago
    I'm still sad about the price explosion :/ I know a lot of it is due to the foundation's decision to prioritize industry over education/hobby, but I remember being absolutely blown away I could get a full ARM-A based dev board for $5 and then, later, one with a BT/wifi for $10.
piersj225 4y ago
For anyone in or around London, for today and tomorrow there is a popup shop on Oxford street selling raspberry pis https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/the-raspberry-pi-store-pops-up-for-the-last-time-this-year-in-london/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/the-raspberry-pi-store-pops...
- Ptchd 4y ago
  They actually have some in stock?
  - nsteel 4y ago
    Yes. At least, they did at the other recent popups. > Raspberry Pi 4 (2GB, 4GB, and 8GB) will be in stock at the pop-up. Please be aware that we’re limiting Raspberry Pi 4 to one of these computers per person. Note that the limit is one of any, not one of each, so you won’t be able to purchase one 2GB model and one 8GB model — you can only buy one of any of these computers. We’ve decided to do this to try to ensure that everyone who has made the trip to Oxford Street can pick up one of these harder-to-come-by boards. EDIT: They are sold out of 8GB Pi4 and Pi 400. https://twitter.com/Raspberry_Pi/status/1585960073549217792 https://twitter.com/Raspberry_Pi/status/1585960073549217792
  - soapdog 4y ago
    They had the 2GB and 4GB in stock when I arrived a couple hours ago. They said they'll have the 8GB tomorrow.
password4321 4y ago
Apparently the two motivators here were noise and price (pre-owned hardware). What would be best if the primary motivator was reducing electricity for a solar-powered setup? I assume e-ink would be the best screen, though it costs a pretty penny for a respectable screen size. It might be worth using a laptop to have the battery taken care of.
- rambambram 4y ago
  Good question. If having a daily desktop environment is still your use case, than maybe a 7 inch (touch) screen from Waveshare is an option? I have one that has a good color screen and says it's also low power consumption, but I never compared to low power alternatives like an e-ink screen.
- doublepg23 4y ago
  I would definitely try an e-ink in person if you haven’t yet. They have gotten much better but even the top of the line models have woeful refresh rates.
eliasmacpherson 4y ago
I tried using it daily as you do, but youtube had stability issues in Chromium and Firefox for ages, so now I rarely use it. When it works, great, when not, I'm not spending any more time trying to figure out why. https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323782 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323782 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323640&start=175 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323640&start=...
- satysin 4y ago
  I've had much better luck and performance using yt-dlp and mpv to watch YouTube videos on a Pi. It isn't an amazing experience as you would imagine but it is much better than trying to do it in the browser.
- rambambram 4y ago
  Ubuntu Mate 20.04 is my secret sauce, I guess. I also found Raspbian (or RPi OS as it is now called) to not always perform properly with Youtube.
- StillBored 4y ago
  Stability issues on RPI's almost always are the result of power and cooling problems. AKA, use one of the official power adapters, and one of the large 3rd party heatsink/fan combos. Web browsing on the rpi is painful at best, and when its "working" will be stressing the poor thing to its max, so... see above.
  - eliasmacpherson 4y ago
    it stands up to stress/linpack, I've the flirc case & and official adapter. It may be something to do with trying to accelerate video. Otherwise it has never crashed. I suspect it's a compilation flag that this ubuntu distro has set correctly that RpiOS has not, I also see some about:config messing to try for another time.
PaulWaldman 4y ago
What is the point for a consumer to use a Raspberry PI 4 today? I recently purchased a mini PC with an Intel N5105, 16GB of Ram, 512GB NVME SSD, two gigabit ethernet ports, two HDMI ports, many USB ports, and Wifi 6. This system was $180, all in. You can't find a Pi 4, much less one with equivalent specs for anywhere near this price. If you can find it, an 8GB PI4 is $75 and then you need to buy the case, power supply, sometimes storage, etc. The N5105 system when under full load is only drawing 7 watts, I've seen it as low as 4 watts when idle. The Pi 4 uses a BCM2711, which according to Passmark, is about 4X slower than an Intel N5105. I do think the PI is great from the hobbyist and industrial perspective, but to just use it as an inexpensive PC seems like a waste.
- rambambram 4y ago
  I used it because I already had one. What brand is your system from? Or isn't it pre-assembled? The price of $180 sounds perfect for an increase in performance and still low power requirements.
  - PaulWaldman 4y ago
    That's a good reason, it's always great when you can repurpose hardware. It is a Beelink model from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. It came pre-assembled with Windows 11 pre-installed. I wiped it and installed Proxmox.
    - rambambram 4y ago
      I just saw their website. Definitely an option for when my RPi lets me down, or - more likely - when I need to do heavier stuff. But these Beelink things come with fans... how's the noise?
      - PaulWaldman 4y ago
        It's essentially silent, I've only ever heard the fan when I'm within a foot of the unit. I pulled the unit apart and the fan looked pretty standard. There are also models on Amazon that use the N5105 that are passively cooled. I havn't used one, so I'm not sure if there is any throttling going on with those models.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
MattDemers 4y ago
>Why should you do this? >Because I was done with the fan noise of my older and more powerful computer. After a while it felt as if a fighter jet was taking off next to me, constantly. I moved my old computer more away from me, but that wasn't enough. :thinking: Feels like this could be fixed by some new fans, or at least an understanding of what GPU/CPU load is. Referencing "buying a new computer" just because of this is kind of overkill.
- rambambram 4y ago
  True, could have replaced the fans. Or better, try to replace them and break something (never assembled a computer, no experience here). I didn't want to spend money on new fans and a technician. Another problem was, I needed something working the next day. But the biggest thing was, I wanted to experience fanless. RPi4 made that possible and held up pretty good, which surprised me.
  - omni 4y ago
    There are fanless full-PC builds, though that would probably require you to build your own computer. Parent's overall point is definitely true though, the idea that you have to go all the way down to a Pi to get a quiet computer is laughable. With a few fans and a decent heatsink you can cool hundreds of watts silently.
    - rambambram 4y ago
      It seems you miss the point of my post. I had the thing lying around. And it is indeed laughable, I laugh my ass off since this little silent computer is still going strong, without me giving up too much of my workflow.
      - MattDemers 4y ago
        Hey, if it works, it works (sorry if my comment came off as snarky). For reference in the future, Noctua fans are typically a highly-rated cheap/quiet fan product.
LordHeini 4y ago
While a Pi can be used to browse the internet a bit and write some text, i would not want to endure the low performance for anything even slightly more heavy weight. I absolutely hate to wait for slow compile times, long startup times, slow disk writes and laggy browsers. All of which you will get on a Pi. The sad truth is that for no reason a lot of modern software is super bloated and eats resources like crazy. And you can not avoid those in work related environments. Things like elastic search, a bunch of docker containers, an IDE, multiple browsers, Thunderbird, Slack and so on... must run in parallel without any hiccup. And my case it has to drive at least 2 monitors, without any complaints, all while video conferencing is running. My base memory usage is around at 10-15 gb all the time (i am using ubuntu with awesome wm) good luck cramming that in the 8gb of the Pi and a swap on a SD card (hope you got an SSD). Modern computers are super silent anyway so who cares if the Pi is quieter than the AC or the cars outside the window. As it stands Pi are ridiculously expensive nowadays so there is really no reason to put up with a subpar solution. Just get a cheap (used) workstation or mini PC which costs the same and is multiple times as powerful. If it is too loud replace the fans with silent ones those are cheap too... My Pi3 is now driving my 3d Printer which is a more appropriate use case. And my Pi4 collects dust behind the TV because it is a bit too slow to serve as a media computer at 4k. I bought those years ago (60€ or so) and would feel completely ripped of if i had paid the current prices.
- technofiend 4y ago
  >I absolutely hate to wait for slow compile times, long startup times, slow disk writes and laggy browsers. All of which you will get on a Pi. Undeniably correct - but if you use your Pi or any other SBC as a poor man's VDI terminal, in other words, using it to remote into a better computer elsewhere, then it's kind of OK. Personally I still found it too slow and laggy for my taste and instead used an Intel NUC. There's probably a good meet-in-the-middle device available on Aliexpress like the fanless systems people use for firewalls but they too can be pricey (vs a Pi). Would love to see a small ARM device powerful enough to push 4k video but still otherwise fanless, preferably something that could be bolted to the VESA block on a monitor or at least hidden behind the monitor.
  - 4y ago
notjtrig 4y ago
I use a KVM extender and keep my desktops in the server room.
culopatin 4y ago
If someone knows of a replacement that would work in a car that’s not $200 please let me know. Needs to run on 11-15v dc and not have a fan so I don’t destroy it when I hit a pothole. Needs to boot Linux and run a Java app.
nsteel 4y ago
For anyone in the UK and desperate, there is some "refurbished" Pi 4 and 3B stock at https://www.okdo.com/c/pi-shop/the-raspberry-pi/ https://www.okdo.com/c/pi-shop/the-raspberry-pi/ it's not RRP but there's a PSU and case included. For the record, I've never seen/heard of this site before today. They also sell Rock SBCs (and also in stock).
nudpiedo 4y ago
I did that for a while when my previous laptop broke. It was fine with a lightweight linux desktop but it was quite slow using an ultrawide screen and horribly slow for some compilations, but it felt like an "almost there" concept, just arrive to the office and turn on the screen. With a normal resolution and in a cloud IDE environment or interpreted only languages like python could have perfectly worked, also for everyone who doesn't need exotic binaries. Some thoughts I had were also, that I could have set up a server-web IDE on it and work on the way with a tablet and a keyboard without rely on a third party cloud, but again, I needed to compile binaries.
AlbertCory 4y ago
hey HNers, this is sorta related to an idea I have, using a Pi plus an RF transceiver for reading RFID tags. Commercial ones with Bluetooth seem to run $1,000 or more. I'm helping out with a food distribution org (lfrad.org). One of their gleaners, Steve, would like an easy way to estimate the weight of the food they've collected from a supermarket. The idea we like is to attach an RFID tag to each box of food (not each item), and segregate the types of food, e.g. a bread box, a produce box, a milk box. Steve already does the repacking, in boxes in his SUV. He knows the average weight of a box of each type of food. The tags will just say what kind of food it is. They can be reused once they're counted. Note that the boxes don't come pre-packed from the store, and he doesn't lay them all out on the ground before putting them in his car. SO: the goal is, he just points his homebrew RFID reader at the car full of boxes, and it counts the boxes of each type of food. Has anyone ever done anything like this? He's a former circuit designer, so hardware hacking is not beyond him. I also have other friends who could help. I think a funky-looking homebrew product is actually preferable to a commercial one, since who's going to steal it? EDIT: thanks for the answers so far. I think some commercial units do work with passive tags at that distance (say, 5 meters), but I'll have to recheck. The trunk can be open; that's not a problem.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  NFC and RFID doesn't work at that kind of range, i.e. standing multiple feet away. It definitely won't work through a metal car trunk too.
- isoprophlex 4y ago
  Your current design employs passive tags. Those rfid tags are lit up by the scanner, and thus must be in very close proximity. There's nothing (that i know of) that will report its data passively over that distance. Alternatives could be Bluetooth beacons or something bespoke, but that will require powering the tags... increasing cost and complexity of operation. Edit: you can use computer vision approaches (like qr codes) if you have line of sight to each box. But that's not guaranteed if I interpret your problem correctly) Edit 2: if you do use RFID but position the reader near the trunk opening and scan each box as it enters the trunk, you can keep a running total of the weight added to the car. That might strike the best cost/effort/result balance given these constraints...
rcarmo 4y ago
I use mine as a very nice thin client: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/10/23/1700 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/10/23/1700
bitwize 4y ago
I figure I could totally main a Raspberry Pi in a pinch. With Emacs and some programming tools, what more do you need? I'd have to budget browser tabs and I'm not going to edit 4K video or run some corpo enterprise microservice architecture on the thing, but it's still more than enough computer for many basic tasks and fairly significant programming.
animitronix 4y ago
Nice article, but pointless until they're cheaply and widely available again.
leros 4y ago
I tried this for a while. It was definitely a functional computer. What bothered me and made me buy a $300 mini PC instead was how long it took Chrome to render a website. On a normal computer, it's basically instant. On the Pi, it took a second for the page to fully load. It wasn't bad, but using the web was no longer a smooth experience which was VERY annoying.
bullen 4y ago
I'm making a 3D multiplayer game engine that should run on the Raspberry 4: http://talk.binarytask.com/task?id=5959519327505901449 http://talk.binarytask.com/task?id=5959519327505901449 It's still ways off because I choose to make the world voxel based.

171 points by rambambram 4y ago

> I use a Raspberry Pi 4 (with 8GB of RAM) as my daily desktop computer. I browse the internet, read and send e-mails, program software, edit photos, create images, watch Youtube videos and play games on it. Without any significant problems. Yes for those lite tasks is fine, and you can also save some watts. The things are different when you want to do audio/video/photo production.

rambambram 4y ago
Of course! But I still was positively surprised that GIMP, Youtube and even Kdenlive worked flawlessly on the thing.
- jerf 4y ago
  Yeah. "Production", implying a high standard of professional quality using a base of uncompressed 4K or 8K might be a bad idea, sure, or trying to run a live event with half-a-dozen input streams and live streaming back out to the internet. But plenty of uses of video editing would still be perfectly possible on an RPi4. It might be noticeably faster on a "real" desktop, but it would be perfectly doable, especially if you were working in less than 1080P for some reason, like a DVD source video.
  - anthk 4y ago
    A DVD resolution can be handled for edition even under a Pentium III or a Rasbperry B+.
- doubled112 4y ago
  It has been a few years, but I used to do all of these things (GIMP, YouTube, Kdenlive) on a Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM Why wouldn't they work on a Pi 4 with higher specs?
  - anthk 4y ago
    4k and 8k video. With 720p OFC a G4 macbook or some bumped up dual Pentium III with Cinelerra/Cinepaint under Linux and a Geforce 3 was more than enough.
  - rambambram 4y ago
    I don't know, but still, I was surprised. Maybe I do know and it has to do with software bloat? I don't find it hard to believe that the software you ran on your Pentium was less bloated somehow.
rr888 4y ago
> audio/video/photo production No one I know does this. The biggest problem for me is to use our corporate remote desktop you need spyware that only works on Windows and Mac.
- jcelerier 4y ago
  This is wild, huge majority of people I know personally who use computers want to do at least one of these things once in a while. Or if not this, some CAD work, 3d modeling, and other computationally expensive things
  - contracertainty 4y ago
    I'm gonna second gp, I don't know anyone who does photo/video editing, cad/cam or 3D modeling. In fact, I know more people with > 3 pi's than I do coders. People love them and use them for all sorts. But I don't know anyone who does any of those things.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    I agree with you, but all those tasks alternate with many hours during which a personal computer is used only for reading and editing documents, or Internet browsing, or audio listening or video watching. For the latter activities, a computer bigger than an Intel NUC or similar computers is never needed. I do CAD work, compilation of large software projects and other tasks that need a fast computer, but I do these on a couple of big tower servers, which I wake up only when necessary. As a PC, I use an Intel NUC, but now there are more alternatives to it than ever, e.g. there are several models of small computers with AMD Rembrandt Ryzen 6000 CPUs. The NUC-like computers are faster than the cheap laptops having the same CPUs and they also have a much more complete set of peripheral ports. I frequently see comments that there are laptops which are cheaper than the NUC-like computers, but those cheap laptops are typically garbage that I would not use even if I would receive them for free. A laptop comparable in performance, versatility and reliability with a $1000 NUC-like computer may cost $3000 or more.
abudabi123 4y ago
On the RasPi4 8GB there is this 4MB jpeg file that crashes Krita but will render slowly in Falkon. https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/150000/150427/ian_oli_2022271_lrg.jpg https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/150000/15...

naikrovek 4y ago

about their previous computers: > After a while it felt as if a fighter jet was taking off next to me, constantly. as someone who spent time around jets in the US Air Force, I absolutely loathe this analogy. The difference between a few computer fans and a jet taking off is like the difference in force between a dead leaf falling on you from 10m above you versus a 25kg anvil falling on you from 10m above you. computer fans are annoying, sure. being 6ft away from a jet engine during takeoff will result in permanent and severe damage to your hearing, if not complete loss of hearing.

denysvitali 4y ago
The Macbook Pro 2019 gets close to that though :D
wccrawford 4y ago
The world is inundated with these over-the-top analogies now. People can't exaggerate just a little, they have to go full nuclear. And when dealing with a lot of sensitive subjects, it negatively affects a lot of people. I'm looking forward to a generation that swings the other way and goes super-literal on everything.
- ejb999 4y ago
  ..that and 'it looks like a war zone' analogy after every storm. Unless you have actually been in an active war zone, you probably shouldn't use that particular analogy either.
- drivers99 4y ago
  Aren’t “inundated” and “full nuclear” exaggerations too?
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    Maybe it was an attempt at humour? Like, "If I've told you once, I've told you a million times - don't exaggerate!"
  - 4y ago

checkyoursudo 4y ago

I cannot buy a Pi 4 (8GB) locally at all. Amazon appears to offer one for 200-250 euros. For 200 euros or less, I can get a NUC-style mini PC at my local electronics store that is more powerful. I wouldn't mind trying out a Pi-as-a-PC, but new models either just aren't available or aren't reasonably priced.

rwaksmunski 4y ago
Yeah I bought a used Lenovo M720q NUC style 6 core i5-8400T 16Gb Ram 512Gb NVMe machine for less than a new Pi 4 8Gb. With a windows 10 pro license. Makes one hell of a home server.
nextos 4y ago
I use an old NUC with a i5-4250U CPU on an Akasa fanless case and it's pretty great. One of the tricks is to run a very thin and simple stack to get really low latency. No compositor, no DE, just a WM and X. And Ethernet. It copes with Google Meet or MS Teams just fine, as well as any light development. I do all heavy lifting by SSHing to a huge workstation. There are lots of nice options if one wants to purchase a brand new fanless desktop: Cirrus7, Tranquil, CompuLab, etc. And of course, fancy DIY with e.g. a Streacom case.
- anthk 4y ago
  In my case I use a NUC but with Gnome with Wayland , NixOS and a Xanmod kernel (multimedia/rt/input optimized throughput) with some blobs purged. No desktop effects. On the netbook, OpenBSD with cwm+xterm+gnufont+tmux plus mpv,gv,mupdf,nsxiv and sometimes links -g and a forked dillo. On SSH, I don't care even if I use wireless: I use Mosh and the remote server it's handled either by Tmux or Screen. The latency on both are comparable.
mpalczewski 4y ago
I bought a used nuc computer on eBay for less than $100 recently. It’s much more powerful than a pi. Used computers are some of the best bargains now.
yrgulation 4y ago

12tvende 4y ago

Damn what IDE do you use? What games do you play?

eddieroger 4y ago
Both of those are specialized use cases by most people's definitions. For most of the uses of normal people, "daily use" is a good web browser and maybe a mail client, and the Pi should be more than capable of running those. A Pi is hardly a gaming rig or a dev box, and I don't think anyone would claim it is.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  That said, Emacs and Vim run fine on a Pi. :)
  - anthk 4y ago
    I run nvi+tmux under an OpenBSD netbook for C/AWK and Perl (sometimes TCL). If flies. No SSD. On gaming, I prefer Nethack/Slashem, IF and retroemulation. Or not, with Scummmvm. I can always use the NUC at the living for games such as Jedi Academy or Jedi Outcast.
mmcallister 4y ago
(n)vim would work a real treat on a pi. Building locally might be tricky depending on the codebase, but it's not entirely unreasonable to expect to have a full fledged IDE on a pi (except Android development, lol)
rambambram 4y ago
I just use the text editor that comes with Ubuntu Mate, it's called Pluma. I only play Mahjong and Solitaire on the thing. So nothing advanced compared to modern day capabilities. I only ask things from my RPi that I know it can perform, so with my software needs I had to adapt to this piece of hardware as well. I'm just surprised it held so well for over a year now.
akho 4y ago

jerf 4y ago

Running on reduced power is not even close to hard, what with the powerful monstrosities our modern systems are. The only really tricky bit is to not try to push too much stuff through the graphics pipelines (higher res graphics is effectively O(n^2) as resolution increases), or use code that gets too clever spending lots of CPU for marginal stuff like pretty animations or something. An RPi4 is comfortably more powerful than anything I had prior to 2010, and if you've got decent solid state storage on it you could argue even past that. It really ought to be snappy and very effective, for everything except maybe the web browser, and that's more the fault of bloated web sites than the computer or the browser in my opinion. This ought to be nothing special, just what people expect.

rambambram 4y ago
True. And that's why I realized again today why I'm so positively surprised by the fact that the RPi actually _can_ do all of the (basic) stuff I want from my desktop computer.

eric4smith 4y ago

Linux is just “almost” there. I could probably use it for my daily programming environment - Elixir, PostgreSQL, Vim, Firefox. But then my job takes a turn… creative. Document manipulation, convert multiple Images into a PDF, easy screenshots and then make a thumbnail with that. Sign docs with my signature. Access to apps like Pixemator. Share files easily. Dropbox. It’s just easier and more productive. It’s hard to not have Mac Preview when you need it. And that’s why I can’t finally switch over to Linux. An no, Gimp is not an alternative. Dropbox alternatives are just more difficult to use. Just so many little things are missing. To be fair, windows does not have a tool like Preview and that’s why I can’t use windows either.

nso 4y ago
Check out Windows 11s new Peek feature
- joshuaissac 4y ago
  Is it that different from the existing 'Preview pane' in Windows Explorer? https://www.windowslatest.com/2022/04/07/windows-11-is-getting-a-nifty-macos-feature-quick-view/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2022/04/07/windows-11-is-getti... https://www.zubairalexander.com/blog/preview-pane-a-cool-new-feature-in-windows-vista/ https://www.zubairalexander.com/blog/preview-pane-a-cool-new...
BeefWellington 4y ago
I do literally all of those things but Mac Preview.
Latty 4y ago
Dropbox has (and as far as I'm aware, always has had) full Linux support?
sevenf0ur 4y ago
Flameshot is dope for screenshots. Gimp can be tough for beginners. I always fumble around before watching a tutorial. Can be annoying having to watch a tutorial just to change the color of a layer.

adhoc_slime 4y ago

you could do a lot of things to reduce fan noise in your computer, but I appreciate this perspective. We constantly over-estimate how powerful a machine we need (probably because of the bad software we run) and underestimate how versatile and powerful a small SBC can be.

akeck 4y ago

I use both a NUC Debian server and an 8GB Rpi. I've been pleasantly surprised how much day-to-day stuff I get done on pi lately.

forinti 4y ago

I recently bought an Android TV Box (Quad-core, 4GB of RAM) just to see if I could use it as a remote terminal. I turns out to be quite practical and fast. The only gotcha is that DNS doesn't work on the VPN and I have to log on to my company computer via its IP. My feeling is that any little quad-core SBC with 8GB of RAM would be quite adequate for remote work and maybe most of my home needs.

ch_123 4y ago

That NextCube-esque case is nice, might get one for myself :)

lygten 4y ago

Ive used a RPi4 4GB as my only computer for well over a year, without any issues. I use my VPS via SSH for any heavy coding tasks. Libre Office, Claws email suit my everyday needs. I’d also like to my get my hands on the 8GB Pi4 version. In theses times of expensive electricity bills, I can have the pi running all day.

rambambram 4y ago
I always wondered how the 4GB version would perform for my use case! What OS do you run?

josefresco 4y ago

This is nice but I can't even buy one! I've been "casually" shopping for a Raspberry Pi for a while now and it seems almost impossible without assistance from a bot, or immense effort.

rambambram 4y ago
True. I was lucky enough to already have one. I recently tried to find another one here in The Netherlands. Usually they're out of stock but can be backordered.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
SyneRyder 4y ago
Would you consider a Pi 400, the model with the C64-like keyboard? They still seem to be available, and seem ideal for the daily computer use-case. Though I guess the difference between 4GB & 8GB RAM is significant.
- josefresco 4y ago
  I'll consider it (for myself), but I'd rather have just the board as I was looking to gift two to my nephews. Someone else pointed me to CanaKit which does have kits for sale (and in stock) that include the individual components: https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-4-extreme-aluminum-case-kit.html https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-4-extreme-aluminum-case...
anaganisk 4y ago
canakit for 2GB and 8GB version seems to be always in stock if you are okay with buying the extreme kit.
doublepg23 4y ago
I set up an RSS-to-Telegram bot on fly.io connected to this feed https://rpilocator.com/ https://rpilocator.com/ and it helped my buddies get a bunch.

hwc 4y ago

If someone would build a Linux-friendly competetor to the ARM64 Mac Mini, I would consider that for my home computer. As it is, I either have to stick with x86_64, go to Apple, or have an under-powered RPi.

easygenes 4y ago
Ironically, the Microsoft ARM Developer Kit that was just released might be a good option. [1] I also personally have used a Qualcomm RB5 [2][3] since last year and can say that it is quite snappy, though the official image is ancient and the modern Debian Linux image Linaro works on for it was still rather buggy. The most robust option is likely Nvidia's AGX Orin Developer Kit [4][5], which Nvidia maintains 20.04 Ubuntu images for [6]. 1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-dev-kit-2023/94K0P67W7581 2: https://developer.qualcomm.com/qualcomm-robotics-rb5-kit 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RArzm3h_0vg 4: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded-systems/jetson-orin/ 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFgsOeHMAW4 6: https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/jetson-linux
- adrian_b 4y ago
  With 4 big Cortex-X1 cores and 4 medium Cortex-A78 cores, the new MS Developer Kit should be much faster than the Qualcomm RB5, which has 4 Cortex-A77 cores. Also the price, at $600, is decent in comparison with the excessive prices requested by NVIDIA for the faster of the Orin variants. Unfortunately, the new MS Developer Kit also includes a Microsoft Pluton, and it is very likely that Pluton is configured to allow only Windows to boot. Otherwise, I would have also been tempted by it, because all the previous ARM-based alternatives have been either very slow, like Raspberry Pi, or very expensive in comparison with the computers with Intel or AMD CPUs having similar performance, like the Qualcomm and NVIDIA development kits.
  - easygenes 4y ago
    The Lenovo X13s is basically a laptop version of the new dev kit, and it seems people are running Linux on it successfully [1][2], so hopefully they haven't done anything different with the dev kit. 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/vh1xse/setup_linux_on_x13s_snapdragon_thinkpad_megathread/ 2: https://youtu.be/YWRbNogRBTw&t=1755

talkingtab 4y ago

I use a Raspberry Pi 4/8G as my maine (ha ha) development machine. I have a special case, which is that I mostly ssh into my websites hosted by digital ocean. I usually have several terminal sessions (+3), some local terminal sessions and firefox. I use the pi mainly because I can have two monitors at once. I just installed ubuntu 22.10 desktop and it appears to work well. I use ubuntu mainely because it is what I run on my remote systems and as long as "it just works" locally then I don't have to deal with many differences between the systems. The best thing I did was to have it boot from a cheap kingston 120GB ssd ($18 now). Makes a world of difference in speed. My biggest complaint is that firefox is a little slow on the uptake, I am usually debugging some web interaction with developer tools and once the page is up it is as fast as I need. I don't play games, I don't edit videos (haven't tried) or other things. Key take-away: for development

rambambram 4y ago
> The best thing I did was to have it boot from a cheap kingston 120GB ssd ($18 now). Makes a world of difference in speed. Nice. I also want to try this, just to get the most speed and performance out of it, without giving in reliability or durability. I should also check out Jeff Geerling's comparison of different MicroSD cards for the RPi.
- happyhardcore 4y ago
  I started out using a cheap MicroSD and it only lasted a week or two before failing; I've since replaced it with a 128 GB SATA SSD with a USB3-SATA dongle I bought off Amazon. No SD card needed and it's served me incredibly well. I figured that even the best MicroSD card isn't going to be designed to run as a computer's boot drive, and SATA SSDs are cheap and plentiful.
  - rambambram 4y ago
    I should definitely look into this, thanks!
- justin66 4y ago

404mm 4y ago

If it works for you than that’s all what matters. If you want a quiet computer without the HW configuration constrains of single board with no slots, I recommend older HP EliteDesk G2 (or newer) 35W SFF. You can get them for about the same price as RPi 4/8GB and they have the option of M.2 SSD and ram expansion. The fan is down to minimal RPM (imo not even audible) and it stays cool. I have been using these for my home servers for years. Just like you, I cannot stand the noise of fans and these are sitting directly behind me and are completely quiet. Even with the slowest cpu options (i3), the performance is in multiples of Pi)

indigodaddy 4y ago
Confirmed I bought 2 HP EliteDesk G2 within the last two years and they really are great for a non-gaming workstation or server. Both under $135. One was an I5-4590 and the other an I7-4770T (both 4th gen and generally capable CPUs), both with 16G ram and an SSD. One had no OS, however the onboard license allowed me to install Win 10 Pro without any issue. Obviously these are also great for throwing Linux onto.

christkv 4y ago

Steam deck is a good option as well and you have great control out of the box of power draw.

brnt 4y ago
Although Pi's aren't obtainable for $35 anymore, a Deck is in a different price category. I prefer used SFF machines.
- Sirened 4y ago
  I'm still sad about the price explosion :/ I know a lot of it is due to the foundation's decision to prioritize industry over education/hobby, but I remember being absolutely blown away I could get a full ARM-A based dev board for $5 and then, later, one with a BT/wifi for $10.

piersj225 4y ago

For anyone in or around London, for today and tomorrow there is a popup shop on Oxford street selling raspberry pis https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/the-raspberry-pi-store-pops-up-for-the-last-time-this-year-in-london/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/the-raspberry-pi-store-pops...

Ptchd 4y ago
They actually have some in stock?
- nsteel 4y ago
  Yes. At least, they did at the other recent popups. > Raspberry Pi 4 (2GB, 4GB, and 8GB) will be in stock at the pop-up. Please be aware that we’re limiting Raspberry Pi 4 to one of these computers per person. Note that the limit is one of any, not one of each, so you won’t be able to purchase one 2GB model and one 8GB model — you can only buy one of any of these computers. We’ve decided to do this to try to ensure that everyone who has made the trip to Oxford Street can pick up one of these harder-to-come-by boards. EDIT: They are sold out of 8GB Pi4 and Pi 400. https://twitter.com/Raspberry_Pi/status/1585960073549217792 https://twitter.com/Raspberry_Pi/status/1585960073549217792
- soapdog 4y ago
  They had the 2GB and 4GB in stock when I arrived a couple hours ago. They said they'll have the 8GB tomorrow.

password4321 4y ago

Apparently the two motivators here were noise and price (pre-owned hardware). What would be best if the primary motivator was reducing electricity for a solar-powered setup? I assume e-ink would be the best screen, though it costs a pretty penny for a respectable screen size. It might be worth using a laptop to have the battery taken care of.

rambambram 4y ago
Good question. If having a daily desktop environment is still your use case, than maybe a 7 inch (touch) screen from Waveshare is an option? I have one that has a good color screen and says it's also low power consumption, but I never compared to low power alternatives like an e-ink screen.
doublepg23 4y ago
I would definitely try an e-ink in person if you haven’t yet. They have gotten much better but even the top of the line models have woeful refresh rates.

eliasmacpherson 4y ago

I tried using it daily as you do, but youtube had stability issues in Chromium and Firefox for ages, so now I rarely use it. When it works, great, when not, I'm not spending any more time trying to figure out why. https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323782 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323782 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323640&start=175 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323640&start=...

satysin 4y ago
I've had much better luck and performance using yt-dlp and mpv to watch YouTube videos on a Pi. It isn't an amazing experience as you would imagine but it is much better than trying to do it in the browser.
rambambram 4y ago
Ubuntu Mate 20.04 is my secret sauce, I guess. I also found Raspbian (or RPi OS as it is now called) to not always perform properly with Youtube.
StillBored 4y ago
Stability issues on RPI's almost always are the result of power and cooling problems. AKA, use one of the official power adapters, and one of the large 3rd party heatsink/fan combos. Web browsing on the rpi is painful at best, and when its "working" will be stressing the poor thing to its max, so... see above.
- eliasmacpherson 4y ago
  it stands up to stress/linpack, I've the flirc case & and official adapter. It may be something to do with trying to accelerate video. Otherwise it has never crashed. I suspect it's a compilation flag that this ubuntu distro has set correctly that RpiOS has not, I also see some about:config messing to try for another time.

PaulWaldman 4y ago

What is the point for a consumer to use a Raspberry PI 4 today? I recently purchased a mini PC with an Intel N5105, 16GB of Ram, 512GB NVME SSD, two gigabit ethernet ports, two HDMI ports, many USB ports, and Wifi 6. This system was $180, all in. You can't find a Pi 4, much less one with equivalent specs for anywhere near this price. If you can find it, an 8GB PI4 is $75 and then you need to buy the case, power supply, sometimes storage, etc. The N5105 system when under full load is only drawing 7 watts, I've seen it as low as 4 watts when idle. The Pi 4 uses a BCM2711, which according to Passmark, is about 4X slower than an Intel N5105. I do think the PI is great from the hobbyist and industrial perspective, but to just use it as an inexpensive PC seems like a waste.

rambambram 4y ago
I used it because I already had one. What brand is your system from? Or isn't it pre-assembled? The price of $180 sounds perfect for an increase in performance and still low power requirements.
- PaulWaldman 4y ago
  That's a good reason, it's always great when you can repurpose hardware. It is a Beelink model from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. It came pre-assembled with Windows 11 pre-installed. I wiped it and installed Proxmox.
  - rambambram 4y ago
    I just saw their website. Definitely an option for when my RPi lets me down, or - more likely - when I need to do heavier stuff. But these Beelink things come with fans... how's the noise?
    - PaulWaldman 4y ago
      It's essentially silent, I've only ever heard the fan when I'm within a foot of the unit. I pulled the unit apart and the fan looked pretty standard. There are also models on Amazon that use the N5105 that are passively cooled. I havn't used one, so I'm not sure if there is any throttling going on with those models.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

MattDemers 4y ago

>Why should you do this? >Because I was done with the fan noise of my older and more powerful computer. After a while it felt as if a fighter jet was taking off next to me, constantly. I moved my old computer more away from me, but that wasn't enough. :thinking: Feels like this could be fixed by some new fans, or at least an understanding of what GPU/CPU load is. Referencing "buying a new computer" just because of this is kind of overkill.

rambambram 4y ago
True, could have replaced the fans. Or better, try to replace them and break something (never assembled a computer, no experience here). I didn't want to spend money on new fans and a technician. Another problem was, I needed something working the next day. But the biggest thing was, I wanted to experience fanless. RPi4 made that possible and held up pretty good, which surprised me.
- omni 4y ago
  There are fanless full-PC builds, though that would probably require you to build your own computer. Parent's overall point is definitely true though, the idea that you have to go all the way down to a Pi to get a quiet computer is laughable. With a few fans and a decent heatsink you can cool hundreds of watts silently.
  - rambambram 4y ago
    It seems you miss the point of my post. I had the thing lying around. And it is indeed laughable, I laugh my ass off since this little silent computer is still going strong, without me giving up too much of my workflow.
    - MattDemers 4y ago
      Hey, if it works, it works (sorry if my comment came off as snarky). For reference in the future, Noctua fans are typically a highly-rated cheap/quiet fan product.

LordHeini 4y ago

While a Pi can be used to browse the internet a bit and write some text, i would not want to endure the low performance for anything even slightly more heavy weight. I absolutely hate to wait for slow compile times, long startup times, slow disk writes and laggy browsers. All of which you will get on a Pi. The sad truth is that for no reason a lot of modern software is super bloated and eats resources like crazy. And you can not avoid those in work related environments. Things like elastic search, a bunch of docker containers, an IDE, multiple browsers, Thunderbird, Slack and so on... must run in parallel without any hiccup. And my case it has to drive at least 2 monitors, without any complaints, all while video conferencing is running. My base memory usage is around at 10-15 gb all the time (i am using ubuntu with awesome wm) good luck cramming that in the 8gb of the Pi and a swap on a SD card (hope you got an SSD). Modern computers are super silent anyway so who cares if the Pi is quieter than the AC or the cars outside the window. As it stands Pi are ridiculously expensive nowadays so there is really no reason to put up with a subpar solution. Just get a cheap (used) workstation or mini PC which costs the same and is multiple times as powerful. If it is too loud replace the fans with silent ones those are cheap too... My Pi3 is now driving my 3d Printer which is a more appropriate use case. And my Pi4 collects dust behind the TV because it is a bit too slow to serve as a media computer at 4k. I bought those years ago (60€ or so) and would feel completely ripped of if i had paid the current prices.

technofiend 4y ago
>I absolutely hate to wait for slow compile times, long startup times, slow disk writes and laggy browsers. All of which you will get on a Pi. Undeniably correct - but if you use your Pi or any other SBC as a poor man's VDI terminal, in other words, using it to remote into a better computer elsewhere, then it's kind of OK. Personally I still found it too slow and laggy for my taste and instead used an Intel NUC. There's probably a good meet-in-the-middle device available on Aliexpress like the fanless systems people use for firewalls but they too can be pricey (vs a Pi). Would love to see a small ARM device powerful enough to push 4k video but still otherwise fanless, preferably something that could be bolted to the VESA block on a monitor or at least hidden behind the monitor.
- 4y ago

notjtrig 4y ago

I use a KVM extender and keep my desktops in the server room.

culopatin 4y ago

If someone knows of a replacement that would work in a car that’s not $200 please let me know. Needs to run on 11-15v dc and not have a fan so I don’t destroy it when I hit a pothole. Needs to boot Linux and run a Java app.

nsteel 4y ago

For anyone in the UK and desperate, there is some "refurbished" Pi 4 and 3B stock at https://www.okdo.com/c/pi-shop/the-raspberry-pi/ https://www.okdo.com/c/pi-shop/the-raspberry-pi/ it's not RRP but there's a PSU and case included. For the record, I've never seen/heard of this site before today. They also sell Rock SBCs (and also in stock).

nudpiedo 4y ago

I did that for a while when my previous laptop broke. It was fine with a lightweight linux desktop but it was quite slow using an ultrawide screen and horribly slow for some compilations, but it felt like an "almost there" concept, just arrive to the office and turn on the screen. With a normal resolution and in a cloud IDE environment or interpreted only languages like python could have perfectly worked, also for everyone who doesn't need exotic binaries. Some thoughts I had were also, that I could have set up a server-web IDE on it and work on the way with a tablet and a keyboard without rely on a third party cloud, but again, I needed to compile binaries.

AlbertCory 4y ago

hey HNers, this is sorta related to an idea I have, using a Pi plus an RF transceiver for reading RFID tags. Commercial ones with Bluetooth seem to run $1,000 or more. I'm helping out with a food distribution org (lfrad.org). One of their gleaners, Steve, would like an easy way to estimate the weight of the food they've collected from a supermarket. The idea we like is to attach an RFID tag to each box of food (not each item), and segregate the types of food, e.g. a bread box, a produce box, a milk box. Steve already does the repacking, in boxes in his SUV. He knows the average weight of a box of each type of food. The tags will just say what kind of food it is. They can be reused once they're counted. Note that the boxes don't come pre-packed from the store, and he doesn't lay them all out on the ground before putting them in his car. SO: the goal is, he just points his homebrew RFID reader at the car full of boxes, and it counts the boxes of each type of food. Has anyone ever done anything like this? He's a former circuit designer, so hardware hacking is not beyond him. I also have other friends who could help. I think a funky-looking homebrew product is actually preferable to a commercial one, since who's going to steal it? EDIT: thanks for the answers so far. I think some commercial units do work with passive tags at that distance (say, 5 meters), but I'll have to recheck. The trunk can be open; that's not a problem.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
NFC and RFID doesn't work at that kind of range, i.e. standing multiple feet away. It definitely won't work through a metal car trunk too.
isoprophlex 4y ago
Your current design employs passive tags. Those rfid tags are lit up by the scanner, and thus must be in very close proximity. There's nothing (that i know of) that will report its data passively over that distance. Alternatives could be Bluetooth beacons or something bespoke, but that will require powering the tags... increasing cost and complexity of operation. Edit: you can use computer vision approaches (like qr codes) if you have line of sight to each box. But that's not guaranteed if I interpret your problem correctly) Edit 2: if you do use RFID but position the reader near the trunk opening and scan each box as it enters the trunk, you can keep a running total of the weight added to the car. That might strike the best cost/effort/result balance given these constraints...

rcarmo 4y ago

I use mine as a very nice thin client: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/10/23/1700 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/10/23/1700

bitwize 4y ago

I figure I could totally main a Raspberry Pi in a pinch. With Emacs and some programming tools, what more do you need? I'd have to budget browser tabs and I'm not going to edit 4K video or run some corpo enterprise microservice architecture on the thing, but it's still more than enough computer for many basic tasks and fairly significant programming.

animitronix 4y ago

Nice article, but pointless until they're cheaply and widely available again.

leros 4y ago

I tried this for a while. It was definitely a functional computer. What bothered me and made me buy a $300 mini PC instead was how long it took Chrome to render a website. On a normal computer, it's basically instant. On the Pi, it took a second for the page to fully load. It wasn't bad, but using the web was no longer a smooth experience which was VERY annoying.

bullen 4y ago

I'm making a 3D multiplayer game engine that should run on the Raspberry 4: http://talk.binarytask.com/task?id=5959519327505901449 http://talk.binarytask.com/task?id=5959519327505901449 It's still ways off because I choose to make the world voxel based.