I just wanna know where the heck I can buy the newest mid to topend models!
I'm in Australia. There's several projects that I've been wanting to kick-start.
Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?
11–20 of 194 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?
#12I just wanna know where the heck I can buy the newest mid to topend models! I'm in Australia. There's several projects that I've been wanting to kick-start.
If you’ve not seen this site, it will tell you : https://rpilocator.com/
Spoiler alert, availability is very poor! They are making 500k units a month and can’t keep up with demand.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain...
My advice would be to preorder and wait - I guess it’s going to be 2023 before they are generally available again.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?
#13I do. I have a Pi I run as a server where it runs PiHole, PiVPN (Wireguard), and a personal Node environment. My main use case is to have a system I can SSH into and develop personal projects. This works well because I have a few machines that I can’t develop locally. A work machine that I cannot mix personal work with. An iPad that has no local shell (I use https://blink.sh for this). It works fantastically!
I’ve made a home “Are you in a meeting” website that everyone on my WiFi can point their browsers to. I have https://tiddlywiki.com instances running there. It manages my VPN when I’m out of the house. And I block a huge portion of ads when I use it as a DNS server.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?
#14I have a 32" 4K monitor in an upstairs room where I work from home with my work laptop. It's away from my main compute infrastructure but I did want a personal device, and a Raspi can drive 4K. So I bought a 4GB Raspi4 and overclocked it to 2GHz.
As long as you can live with slightly sluggish mouse click response, it's OK. Make that very sluggish on heavy Javascript web stuff like Gmail or Facebook. But it all works.
Video playback is an issue. First I ran the default 32-bit Raspi OS, and 1080 was marginal (forget 4K - it does drive the resolution but it's not fast enough to really do video - fullscreen Youtube for example at that resolution). So I applied various copypasta from the internet to fully enable hardware accelerated video - the framerate of glxgears confirmed that GL was faster than before. Video was now performant but with horizontal tearing issues that weren't there previously.
After the official 64 bit Raspi OS came out, I started over with that. Performance is not noticeably different. Not all the copypasta from before worked; no tearing issues now, but again if you want to play local media with VLC or mplayer, better stick to 1080 and if you want to comfortably watch fullscreen Youtube, go to 720. I have some quick command line aliases to switch the display resolution for this.
The device doesn't do suspend/resume, but on the other hand, desktop idle uses about as much power as a night light, so it's simply left on all the time. It's in the open (screwed to the bottom of a desktop) with a pair of small heat sinks stuck to the main integrated circuits. Thermal is OK; about the only way to drive it to thermal throttling is the "stress" command; otherwise heat is not a limiting factor.
One thing that was mostly impossible last time I tried it with Raspi OS (32-bit mode) was video calling with the common web-based tools. Skype, for example, didn't offer it, no matter what the system configuration. This may be a deal breaker for "main computer".
Others have said that the Wifi on Raspis is solid, but in my own experience they always end up plugged into a hardwired ethernet connection.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?
#15I've used a Pi4/4mb as my main desktop for a few days while waiting for parts for the "big" system; it kept up with HN and discord, let me access my text files, and that was about all I expected from it. I had to use a different device to access web stores and track the replacement parts.
Far, far better than nothing, but limited enough that there's things you just can't do.
(I've also got 3 on TVs, one as the house fileserver, and a couple that get thrown down whenever im doing a project that can use them. those aren't "main")
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d imagine JavaScript heavy sites are pretty miserable on the Pi even the latest models.
Which is remarkable given how many older systems and software the pi can run natively or emulate at full speed. The web really can be embarassing in terms of performance.
But who cares? I don’t browse on a PI, I browse on a laptop.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?
#17Sevarg has done it https://www.sevarg.net/2019/12/14/building-raspberry-pi-4-de...
It’s totally doable from what I understand and sips tiny amounts of power.
An M1 may be better but I don’t know if it can get as low power.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?
#18surfing the web is a pain. I use a phone for webmail stuff, otherwise fallback to tui. rpi400 with alpine 64bit, external 1To SSD usb 3.
why is it a "pain"?
Media elements, JavaScript, RAM limitations, difficult video rendering, and crashing limit its productivity.
Looking for ways to apply a new CCD to pi astrophotography recently, I made two mistakes: I didn't block ads and I opened more than two tabs.
The pi ended up in swap hell for over a minute before I restarted. This is an rpi4 4GB, OC'd with heatsinks and active cooling, on a good IOPS SD. Browsing the web is the only thing I've found that it routinely struggles with.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?
#19I do. I have a Pi I run as a server where it runs PiHole, PiVPN (Wireguard), and a personal Node environment. My main use case is to have a system I can SSH into and develop personal projects. This works well because I have a few machines that I can’t develop locally. A work machine that I cannot mix personal work with. An iPad that has no local shell (I use https://blink.sh for this). It works fantastically! I’ve ma…
This is how I intend to use mine, I just have not sat down to do it. This way I don't need to waste any resources on my main box. I'm also kind of waiting to buy a Pi 4. I used to run Pi-Hole at home but it got corrupted. I also had openHAB setup as well to control my A/C via ... whatever that wireless protocol is called that my thermostat was using. I have since replaced my thermostats with the Wyze one.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?
#20I have a couple of Pi's on the network. I tried to replace an older, home-built Linux file server with a Pi 4: stock Raspbian, a 5 TB USB drive, no display. It was very slow; finally I replaced it with a $250 refurbished Dell from Ebay; threw Debian on it, and never looked back. Pi is a fun toy for some purposes but at this point I don't see it being useful as anything but a wireguard gateway (eventually).
At it's original price, it's quite useful for small projects such as controlling a CNC (laser, 3d printer, router, etc) or a retro game console, etc.
When you scale beyond that, even a cluster of them can't match a really cheap mini desktop computer.
At current prices, you're definitely better off with the mini desktop. I wanted to add a Pi to my other 3d printer recently, and can't find one laying around, so I went to buy a $15 R Pi 0W2... It's $115 on Amazon and sold out everywhere else. For slightly more, I can get a 3 or 4. For slightly more yet, I'm in mini PC territory. The software can run on Linux, but it's designed for a Pi and the instructions say you're on your own. Ugh.