> I personally cringe when I see people trying to string together a bunch of drives on a shared USB bus for a NAS application, or trying to hack something arou

> I personally cringe when I see people trying to string together a bunch of drives on a shared USB bus for a NAS application, or trying to hack something around the single lane of PCIe or whatever... When by the time you get to kludging that together you could have bought a small used NAS with drive bays for equivalent or less cost that would be at least an order of magnitude faster and significantly more reliable. I don't think this is a fair comparison. In principle, anyone could follow the hacky instructions for the Pi and complete the same project. In some cases (such as the PiHole), it might even be worthwhile. If your instructions begin with "find a used thin client on eBay," however, then there's no guarantee that the subsequent instructions are useful. My thin terminal might not be the same as the author's, and the author certainly can't specify a single particular brand/model because the eBay stock is limited and changeable. "Mainstreaming" a hobby project needs the standardization at least as much as it needs the performance, and the Raspberry Pi's ecosystem remains an advantage. Ironically, this advantage is the same reason that the company prioritized business deliveries during the shortage, since business use depends even more critically on the stable, supported platform.