4 ms·

I wonder if anyone here is using RPi as a main PC? Seems to be capable of most office work with a bit of multimedia on the side. My laptop is dying and I would

I wonder if anyone here is using RPi as a main PC? Seems to be capable of most office work with a bit of multimedia on the side. My laptop is dying and I would love to get something stationary that is low-power by default yet good enough so that the internet wouldn't lag. Mounted at the back of an LCD screen could make a nice wireless setup with the other peripherals.

throwaway2990 3y ago
Na it’s too slow. I got one and I don’t touch it. I do also have an orange pi 5 and khandas edge 2 pro. Both are miles ahead of the rpi4 and based on specs they are miles ahead of the rpi5.
- badtension 3y ago
  Are your other microcomputers capable of normal office operation?
  - throwaway2990 3y ago
    100%. I use them for development. One has ubuntu installed and the other Fedora.
    - alskdj21 3y ago
      Interesting. Can you give more details on your work? I've been on the edge lately over picking a desktop, an intel NUC or something like a Pi. Price to performance and power draw is something I'm considering.
      - throwaway2990 3y ago
        Both I run JetBrains IDEs on both to do c++, rust, and .net work. One device is for work and one for personal. https://www.khadas.com/edge2 https://www.khadas.com/edge2 https://www.amazon.com/Orange-Pi-Computer-Frequency-Android/dp/B0C9HWHZ88/ https://www.amazon.com/Orange-Pi-Computer-Frequency-Android/...
      - badtension 3y ago
        Same here. A great advantage of such devices is they can later be easily repurposed to control home automation, audio system or make a simple DIY project with them. It is much harder with other types of hardware, like a laptop for example.
- lonjil 3y ago
  In actual real benchmarking OPi5 is about the same as RPi5.
  - throwaway2990 3y ago
    You’re joking right? It’s half the performance of the opi5…
    - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
      The Pi 5 seems to be pretty head-to-head with the OPie 5: https://www.phoronix.com/review/raspberry-pi-5-benchmarks/3 https://www.phoronix.com/review/raspberry-pi-5-benchmarks/3
preisschild 3y ago
> I wonder if anyone here is using RPi as a main PC? Seems to be capable of most office work with a bit of multimedia on the side. My laptop is dying and I would love to get something stationary that is low-power by default yet good enough so that the internet wouldn't lag. Unfortunately, it is too slow to even smoothly power a desktop environment.
- badtension 3y ago
  Thanks. This is a bit surprising to me since they advertise two 60 Hz 4K display drivers...
  - dtx1 3y ago
    You can have 4k60 and still have open office take seconds to respond to a keyboard input.
    - badtension 3y ago
      Sure but why include that if a text processor is too much for the board? To display static images or demoscene visualisations?
      - dtx1 3y ago
        If it's hardware accelerated it could still display that fine. I'm sure there are older games that could indeed run in 4k60fps
      - ric2b 3y ago
        It will probably display video at those resolutions and refresh rates just fine, so it could be used for improvised commercial displays like a TV at a conference looping some information, for example.
  - daveoc64 3y ago
    The Raspberry Pi 4 could do a single monitor at 4K/60Hz. The overall performance still wasn't great.
epolanski 3y ago
I think for many devs that can use dev containers or codespaces is more than okay. Would not do heavy computing on it though, eslint alone for my use cases already kills my 8 core 7700x
cdt5050 3y ago
I was using a Pi 400 for my programming PC, basically testing out if I can sell my gaming PC after I got my steam deck. It was perfectly capable for that task, and I’d say I would be happy to use it as my primary desktop PC. Just sold my Pi 400 after the announcement of the Pi 5, deciding the Pi 5 will be my primary desktop PC. (Also ordered a Pi 4 because I have some other plans for it, but don’t want it built into a keyboard). Falling back onto my Pi 3 I never really used before — it’s surprisingly capable. Not as a general desktop but gets my programming done fine. Its bottleneck seems to be I/O and limited RAM.
- badtension 3y ago
  Thanks for the info! What system / DE do you intend on using? What type of work do you do on your computer? I was thinking about getting a wireless keyboard+mice and attach RPi at the back of my monitor to have a clean and very low-power setup.

throwaway2990 3y ago

Na it’s too slow. I got one and I don’t touch it. I do also have an orange pi 5 and khandas edge 2 pro. Both are miles ahead of the rpi4 and based on specs they are miles ahead of the rpi5.

badtension 3y ago
Are your other microcomputers capable of normal office operation?
- throwaway2990 3y ago
  100%. I use them for development. One has ubuntu installed and the other Fedora.
  - alskdj21 3y ago
    Interesting. Can you give more details on your work? I've been on the edge lately over picking a desktop, an intel NUC or something like a Pi. Price to performance and power draw is something I'm considering.
    - throwaway2990 3y ago
      Both I run JetBrains IDEs on both to do c++, rust, and .net work. One device is for work and one for personal. https://www.khadas.com/edge2 https://www.khadas.com/edge2 https://www.amazon.com/Orange-Pi-Computer-Frequency-Android/dp/B0C9HWHZ88/ https://www.amazon.com/Orange-Pi-Computer-Frequency-Android/...
    - badtension 3y ago
      Same here. A great advantage of such devices is they can later be easily repurposed to control home automation, audio system or make a simple DIY project with them. It is much harder with other types of hardware, like a laptop for example.
lonjil 3y ago
In actual real benchmarking OPi5 is about the same as RPi5.
- throwaway2990 3y ago
  You’re joking right? It’s half the performance of the opi5…
  - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
    The Pi 5 seems to be pretty head-to-head with the OPie 5: https://www.phoronix.com/review/raspberry-pi-5-benchmarks/3 https://www.phoronix.com/review/raspberry-pi-5-benchmarks/3

preisschild 3y ago

> I wonder if anyone here is using RPi as a main PC? Seems to be capable of most office work with a bit of multimedia on the side. My laptop is dying and I would love to get something stationary that is low-power by default yet good enough so that the internet wouldn't lag. Unfortunately, it is too slow to even smoothly power a desktop environment.

badtension 3y ago
Thanks. This is a bit surprising to me since they advertise two 60 Hz 4K display drivers...
- dtx1 3y ago
  You can have 4k60 and still have open office take seconds to respond to a keyboard input.
  - badtension 3y ago
    Sure but why include that if a text processor is too much for the board? To display static images or demoscene visualisations?
    - dtx1 3y ago
      If it's hardware accelerated it could still display that fine. I'm sure there are older games that could indeed run in 4k60fps
    - ric2b 3y ago
      It will probably display video at those resolutions and refresh rates just fine, so it could be used for improvised commercial displays like a TV at a conference looping some information, for example.
- daveoc64 3y ago
  The Raspberry Pi 4 could do a single monitor at 4K/60Hz. The overall performance still wasn't great.

epolanski 3y ago

I think for many devs that can use dev containers or codespaces is more than okay. Would not do heavy computing on it though, eslint alone for my use cases already kills my 8 core 7700x

cdt5050 3y ago

I was using a Pi 400 for my programming PC, basically testing out if I can sell my gaming PC after I got my steam deck. It was perfectly capable for that task, and I’d say I would be happy to use it as my primary desktop PC. Just sold my Pi 400 after the announcement of the Pi 5, deciding the Pi 5 will be my primary desktop PC. (Also ordered a Pi 4 because I have some other plans for it, but don’t want it built into a keyboard). Falling back onto my Pi 3 I never really used before — it’s surprisingly capable. Not as a general desktop but gets my programming done fine. Its bottleneck seems to be I/O and limited RAM.

badtension 3y ago
Thanks for the info! What system / DE do you intend on using? What type of work do you do on your computer? I was thinking about getting a wireless keyboard+mice and attach RPi at the back of my monitor to have a clean and very low-power setup.