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I like this post. As someone who is deeply afraid of their Raspberry Pi, this could be the silver bullet. An RPI project to me is 20% surface level solution an

I like this post. As someone who is deeply afraid of their Raspberry Pi, this could be the silver bullet. An RPI project to me is 20% surface level solution and 80% troubleshooting. Your standard RPI forum thread to do one thing quickly spans to a mile long, because "I tried what you recommended but what to do now that I have a new problem". You can really feel that experiencd in this thread. Most RPI experience in my opinion is similiar to mine. You can not solve "a" problem with "a" solution. You always need a series of solutions with progressive tweaking. This post captures that essence, solving a problem and coming to a goal with an RPI that is written like a travel story.

green-salt 4y ago
I stopped using raspberry pis for this reason. A small form factor refurb PC suits what I am doing way better and I don't have to try to find ARM binaries for everything.
pcouy 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback. I did not expect people to enjoy my writing that much :)
jeron 4y ago
I think it depends on the use case. My experience with my RPi used as a 3D printing tool has been plug and play with OctoPi and haven’t needed to tweak it much at all
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giobox 4y ago
> As someone who is deeply afraid of their Raspberry Pi, this could be the silver bullet. To me this is much the same as writing "As someone who is deeply afraid of their computer, this could be the silver bullet." A Pi is just a credit card sized ARM computer - there is no magic, it can run many of the same OSes as any other desktop or laptop, it can run the exact same apps and software in many cases. Thinking of it as somehow different is already a bad way to begin.
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  [deleted]
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  > A Pi is just a credit card sized ARM computer Well, not just a "ARM computer", a Arm 32-bit computer. If you're stuck with the "Raspberry Pi 1", "Raspberry Pi 2" and "Raspberry Pi Zero", you are really stuck with a 32 bit computer. Even assuming you have a arm64 enabled Raspberry Pi, you need to use the 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS, or you're stuck in a 32-bit userland. Even assuming you have Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit), you now are using a experimental version of Raspberry Pi OS, so expect issues. > there is no magic, it can run many of the same OSes as any other desktop or laptop There is actually a lot of magic involved, specifically, GPU blobs required for booting, and a patched (and old) kernel. Just try loading any other OS that doesn't specifically bundle those patches and a newer kernel and the rough spots get you pretty fast. > it can run the exact same apps and software in many cases The same apps and software, possibly. Recent versions of said apps and software - unlikely. It defaults to safe and old Debian versions of apps and software.
  - giobox 4y ago
    > It defaults to safe and old Debian versions of apps and software. It doesn't default to anything - you can load whatever OS you like that will run, including latest major Linux distros, and plenty to choose from. You can obtain your software from anywhere you want, not just the distro's default package manager. Exactly like a plain ole computer. > Recent versions of said apps and software - unlikely. I have the latest Ubuntu LTS with Firefox, VSCode, Chromium etc all running on a Pi right now, the latest versions much the same as any other computer I own. It runs the latest versions of virtually all programming runtimes. It can have the latest version of Docker... Getting recent releases of Linux software appropriate for a credit sized hobbyist arm computer is rarely a problem at all on the Pi 4, which has been out now since ~2019. Its still not all that much harder on a Pi 2, 3 or zero.
    - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
      > I have the latest Ubuntu LTS (...) all on the Pi 4, which has been out now since ~2019. Well, "out since 2019", but since 2021 new Raspberry Pis are basically unobtainable. And most "Pi 4"s are new. > Its still not all that much harder on a Pi 2, 3 or zero. Said Ubuntu Desktop 22.04.2 LTS for Raspberry Pi only "supports" the "Raspberry Pi 400" and "Raspberry Pi 4/Raspberry Pi CM4" +2GB ram configurations. Even Canonical expects pain if you don't use those. "Raspberry Pi 3" might be useable if you have tamed expectations. "Raspberry Pi 2" has issues because of it's 32-bit distribution. Using anything "modern" on it probably means compiling stuff (very slowly if on-device) and fixing issues yourself. "Raspberry Pi Zero" isn't even listed as supported anywhere because attempting to running anything non-purpose built for it is painful.
slingnow 4y ago
Anyone who uses the term "deeply afraid" to describe their feelings towards what amounts to just a smaller version of their laptop... I just don't know what to say really. What exactly is the silver bullet here unless you were planning on doing this exact project? Seeing someone else solve a problem with the Pi? There must be thousands of instances of people solving problems with a Pi on the internet before this post. And it sounds like you're familiar with them, since you cite statistics on the kinds of problems people run into when using the Pi.
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> An RPI project to me is 20% surface level solution and 80% troubleshooting. Don't be afraid, I'll give you a few examples to cheer you up and motivate you... (just make sure to backup your working Pi setup: I just dd the entire microSD card once it's working). I've got one of my Pi who literally reached more than one year uptime. It's gently sitting, since years, in another country, constantly and relentlessly establishing reverse-SSH tunnels. Zero issue. I ran a RasPBX on a Raspberry Pi 1 (yup, 1, a decade ago or so) for years, hooked to a SIP trunk, to provide VoIP to four Cisco VoIP phones. Zero issue. Once it was setup, I did "dd" its microSD card and kept the backup safe and that was it. I never needed them. My wife's SME's employees used that daily, for years on. Zero problem. Regarding TFA: > Since I was not willing to spend more money on my setup, I used a Raspberry Pi 3 which was sitting unused in one of my drawers. That's the spirit! Recently I decided to use one of my idle Raspberry Pi 3 as a "firewall+router" between two private LANs. It's surprisingly capable at that even if it is definitely the bottleneck: I've got fiber to the home and the Pi 3 cannot do anywhere near Gigabit ethernet, especially seen that it's only got one ethernet port and I needed two, so I had to use a USB-to-ethernet adapter... But the Pi 3 only does USB 2.0. A few firewalling rules and it's happily firewalling and routing traffic. After reading a few comments here I also decided to configure another Raspberry Pi as a DNS, running unbound (while my main "workstation" runs dnsmasq as a cache, but the DNS is unbound on the Pi). Someone also mentioned using a Pi Zero to transform a non-networked printer into a networked one: I'm planning to do just that for my trusty B&W laser Brother printer (haven't done it yet). I've got a Raspberry Pi with a Pi2JAMMA adapter in my vintage arcade cab. Zero issue. (Once again: I've got a "dd" of the full microSD card should some issue show up). Every single time I turn it on, it just works. One of my Pi is my "airline / airgapped / booting and remounting the system read-only", with X all working in RAM. Sure, these Pis aren't advanced servers full of redundancy and ECC RAM but they cost next to nothing and they're trusty little beasts. And on that subject of these Pis not being that powerful: there's no way I'd use a Pi as my main desktop, I've got a beefy desktop and I wouldn't want to replace it with a Pi. P.S: I'll probably be only buying Beaglebones from now on because the Pis now seems to be unobtainium.
abawany 4y ago
I've used mine as mostly always-on servers running stock raspbian with services that I need. They have been very reliable and power+space efficient compared to the low-end surplus pcs I previously used for these purposes. I say all this to encourage you to dip your toes into it with something super basic - once you see that it just works, maybe the projects that follow will seem less daunting.

green-salt 4y ago

I stopped using raspberry pis for this reason. A small form factor refurb PC suits what I am doing way better and I don't have to try to find ARM binaries for everything.

pcouy 4y ago

Thanks for the feedback. I did not expect people to enjoy my writing that much :)

jeron 4y ago

I think it depends on the use case. My experience with my RPi used as a 3D printing tool has been plug and play with OctoPi and haven’t needed to tweak it much at all

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

giobox 4y ago

> As someone who is deeply afraid of their Raspberry Pi, this could be the silver bullet. To me this is much the same as writing "As someone who is deeply afraid of their computer, this could be the silver bullet." A Pi is just a credit card sized ARM computer - there is no magic, it can run many of the same OSes as any other desktop or laptop, it can run the exact same apps and software in many cases. Thinking of it as somehow different is already a bad way to begin.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ElectricalUnion 4y ago
> A Pi is just a credit card sized ARM computer Well, not just a "ARM computer", a Arm 32-bit computer. If you're stuck with the "Raspberry Pi 1", "Raspberry Pi 2" and "Raspberry Pi Zero", you are really stuck with a 32 bit computer. Even assuming you have a arm64 enabled Raspberry Pi, you need to use the 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS, or you're stuck in a 32-bit userland. Even assuming you have Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit), you now are using a experimental version of Raspberry Pi OS, so expect issues. > there is no magic, it can run many of the same OSes as any other desktop or laptop There is actually a lot of magic involved, specifically, GPU blobs required for booting, and a patched (and old) kernel. Just try loading any other OS that doesn't specifically bundle those patches and a newer kernel and the rough spots get you pretty fast. > it can run the exact same apps and software in many cases The same apps and software, possibly. Recent versions of said apps and software - unlikely. It defaults to safe and old Debian versions of apps and software.
- giobox 4y ago
  > It defaults to safe and old Debian versions of apps and software. It doesn't default to anything - you can load whatever OS you like that will run, including latest major Linux distros, and plenty to choose from. You can obtain your software from anywhere you want, not just the distro's default package manager. Exactly like a plain ole computer. > Recent versions of said apps and software - unlikely. I have the latest Ubuntu LTS with Firefox, VSCode, Chromium etc all running on a Pi right now, the latest versions much the same as any other computer I own. It runs the latest versions of virtually all programming runtimes. It can have the latest version of Docker... Getting recent releases of Linux software appropriate for a credit sized hobbyist arm computer is rarely a problem at all on the Pi 4, which has been out now since ~2019. Its still not all that much harder on a Pi 2, 3 or zero.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    > I have the latest Ubuntu LTS (...) all on the Pi 4, which has been out now since ~2019. Well, "out since 2019", but since 2021 new Raspberry Pis are basically unobtainable. And most "Pi 4"s are new. > Its still not all that much harder on a Pi 2, 3 or zero. Said Ubuntu Desktop 22.04.2 LTS for Raspberry Pi only "supports" the "Raspberry Pi 400" and "Raspberry Pi 4/Raspberry Pi CM4" +2GB ram configurations. Even Canonical expects pain if you don't use those. "Raspberry Pi 3" might be useable if you have tamed expectations. "Raspberry Pi 2" has issues because of it's 32-bit distribution. Using anything "modern" on it probably means compiling stuff (very slowly if on-device) and fixing issues yourself. "Raspberry Pi Zero" isn't even listed as supported anywhere because attempting to running anything non-purpose built for it is painful.

slingnow 4y ago

Anyone who uses the term "deeply afraid" to describe their feelings towards what amounts to just a smaller version of their laptop... I just don't know what to say really. What exactly is the silver bullet here unless you were planning on doing this exact project? Seeing someone else solve a problem with the Pi? There must be thousands of instances of people solving problems with a Pi on the internet before this post. And it sounds like you're familiar with them, since you cite statistics on the kinds of problems people run into when using the Pi.

TacticalCoder 4y ago

> An RPI project to me is 20% surface level solution and 80% troubleshooting. Don't be afraid, I'll give you a few examples to cheer you up and motivate you... (just make sure to backup your working Pi setup: I just dd the entire microSD card once it's working). I've got one of my Pi who literally reached more than one year uptime. It's gently sitting, since years, in another country, constantly and relentlessly establishing reverse-SSH tunnels. Zero issue. I ran a RasPBX on a Raspberry Pi 1 (yup, 1, a decade ago or so) for years, hooked to a SIP trunk, to provide VoIP to four Cisco VoIP phones. Zero issue. Once it was setup, I did "dd" its microSD card and kept the backup safe and that was it. I never needed them. My wife's SME's employees used that daily, for years on. Zero problem. Regarding TFA: > Since I was not willing to spend more money on my setup, I used a Raspberry Pi 3 which was sitting unused in one of my drawers. That's the spirit! Recently I decided to use one of my idle Raspberry Pi 3 as a "firewall+router" between two private LANs. It's surprisingly capable at that even if it is definitely the bottleneck: I've got fiber to the home and the Pi 3 cannot do anywhere near Gigabit ethernet, especially seen that it's only got one ethernet port and I needed two, so I had to use a USB-to-ethernet adapter... But the Pi 3 only does USB 2.0. A few firewalling rules and it's happily firewalling and routing traffic. After reading a few comments here I also decided to configure another Raspberry Pi as a DNS, running unbound (while my main "workstation" runs dnsmasq as a cache, but the DNS is unbound on the Pi). Someone also mentioned using a Pi Zero to transform a non-networked printer into a networked one: I'm planning to do just that for my trusty B&W laser Brother printer (haven't done it yet). I've got a Raspberry Pi with a Pi2JAMMA adapter in my vintage arcade cab. Zero issue. (Once again: I've got a "dd" of the full microSD card should some issue show up). Every single time I turn it on, it just works. One of my Pi is my "airline / airgapped / booting and remounting the system read-only", with X all working in RAM. Sure, these Pis aren't advanced servers full of redundancy and ECC RAM but they cost next to nothing and they're trusty little beasts. And on that subject of these Pis not being that powerful: there's no way I'd use a Pi as my main desktop, I've got a beefy desktop and I wouldn't want to replace it with a Pi. P.S: I'll probably be only buying Beaglebones from now on because the Pis now seems to be unobtainium.

abawany 4y ago

I've used mine as mostly always-on servers running stock raspbian with services that I need. They have been very reliable and power+space efficient compared to the low-end surplus pcs I previously used for these purposes. I say all this to encourage you to dip your toes into it with something super basic - once you see that it just works, maybe the projects that follow will seem less daunting.