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Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?

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Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?

#161

Post by alpaca128 »

I actually started doing that last week. RPi4, 8GB. I have it in a full aluminium case that allows passive cooling without throttling unless I really push it. Absolutely silence is more noticeable than I thought compared to a quiet cooler.

The performance is, of course, not that great. The official Raspbian desktop had a few glitches. But I'm using it mainly for coding and surfing the web with the occasional YT video, and it handles that fine.

The 8GB RAM is overkill. Really, you have to try hard to fill it all because it's clearly not the bottleneck. I set up a 3GB ramdisk partition, to me quick (even if volatile) storage is more valuable on a device running from an SD card.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?

#162

Post by sitkack »

Alan_Dillman wrote: post #158
Decabytes wrote: post #81

I used an 8gb RPI4 as my main dev computer for a bit. The idea was that if I was wasting cycles it would become a lot more apparent earlier on using the RPI 4 than on my main desktop. Also because I had less stuff on the PI (No steam/games) I had less things to get distracted about. YouTube can play 1080p but because of the slowness consuming video after video is not a smooth experience which stopped me from binging…

Right? Its so close to being wonderful, and I really like the raspiOS desktop. I think we're right around the corner from a new ARM frontier opening up. Tomorrow (today!) my experiment is a minimal systemd linux. Thanks, something in your writing reminded me of that, I had just started reading about it last night. My inspiration was the "minimum linux live" project, which of course is not really a practical start poi…

This means you can outfit a developer or student anywhere in the world with a functioning workstation for under $200, monitor, desk, keyboard, mouse, everything.

We might find it somewhat anachronistic, but it really could help bring millions of people out of poverty.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?

#163

Post by hkt »

jacknews wrote: post #63
gexla wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is close to my answer. Good alternatives for not much more money. Good for limiting wasteful time. The more system I have, the more I want to screw around. I use Visual Studio Code and Obsidian on my system and they both run fine. They are probably among the better Electron apps though.

Except that Udoo is 10x the price I paid for a pi 4, actually 13x including exchange rates.

True, but it has fewer limitations. I'm a fiend for Stellaris and Endless Sky, what can I say?

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?

#164

Post by sitkack »

digisign wrote: post #138
yboris wrote: post #104

Not as my main computer, but as my digital piano sidekick, a USB output from the piano goes to my Raspberry Pi which runs Pianoteq (makes the piano sound like a $100k piano). Optionally, the Pi lights up some addressable LEDs coinciding with keys. https://github.com/youfou/pianoteq-pi & https://github.com/whyboris/Digital-Piano-LED

Beware, that setup.py script is not a setuptools script but builds the other scripts and config on the fly. Install is "wget | sudo python." Then it overclocks the Pi. :-/ I once tried installing timidity and usb keyboard on a RPi but there was too much latency to be useful. Interested in the subject, but seems this could be done in a safer manner.

It is made by hobbyists to turn a rpi into a dedicated device, I can understand the brute force methods they employ. It looks like it needs the OCd speed to run the software. A different name that didn't collide with current Python ecosystem scripts wouldn't raise as many concerns.

*edit, inverted meaning of last sentance

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?

#165

Post by noud »

noud wrote: post #127

I use my Raspberry Pi 3 as my home RAID system (with 4 x 8 TB hdd). Not very fast, but definitely cheap with a low energy usage.

Sure! I connected them with a usb adapter with external power source. The power source of the Raspberry Pi alone is not enough to run four disks at the same time (at least not for me). For the hard drives I bought a couple of 2.5" disks that I connected to the usb adapter together with my Raspberry Pi. The board runs Debian, and I've setup a RAID 5 system. Then, each of the logical volumes are encrypted with (as?) LUKS. Quite some fun to setup the system, but don't expect any miracles. During a good day I get a read and write speed of roughly 30 mb/s over the home network. Enough for me as a backup system for home usage.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?

#167

Post by dmerrick »

suifbwish wrote: post #154
digisign wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware, that setup.py script is not a setuptools script but builds the other scripts and config on the fly. Install is "wget | sudo python." Then it overclocks the Pi. :-/ I once tried installing timidity and usb keyboard on a RPi but there was too much latency to be useful. Interested in the subject, but seems this could be done in a safer manner.

Never trust anyone who gives you a command that both downloads and executes any script. That person is either malicious, incompetent or they know the risks and just don’t give a shit

How is this different from any other installer that asks for admin access? At least the wget method gives you an opportunity to look at the install script, which most software installers dont provide

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?

#168

Post by adamomada »

suifbwish wrote: post #154
digisign wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware, that setup.py script is not a setuptools script but builds the other scripts and config on the fly. Install is "wget | sudo python." Then it overclocks the Pi. :-/ I once tried installing timidity and usb keyboard on a RPi but there was too much latency to be useful. Interested in the subject, but seems this could be done in a safer manner.

Never trust anyone who gives you a command that both downloads and executes any script. That person is either malicious, incompetent or they know the risks and just don’t give a shit

It’s just a short-cut, you can easily examine the script and run it later. Most of the time I’ve seen a fair warning to always do the same.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?

#169

Post by 1R »

My primary computer is a raspberry pi 400. I use an SSD, usually, but also find the SD performance to be pretty good. I'm running raspbian lite with sway, and use moonlight to remotely operate a more capable workstation, when needed. The pi 400 is my favorite computer yet!

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer?

#170

Post by adamomada »

walrus01 wrote: post #139
freedomben wrote: post #85

My son currently does and has for about a year. I also have for short periods as computers were "in the shop." He's used a couple different pis with varying success. At least 4 GB of RAM is a must. The distro you run also matters a great deal. The Pi4 with 8 GB is very usable as a main computer. I'm a Fedora person normally but for the Pi Raspbian is always my choice because it is so well optimized for low memory dev…

swapping to 'disk' on a raspberry pi using a microsd card for primary storage seems like a very quick way to kill your microsd card considering the poor number of write cycles per cell on those, compared to a real ssd, and overall write endurance. not a factor if you swap device is on something like a usb3-connected $50 consumer grade ssd plugged into the raspberry pi.

I’m surprised swap is enabled at all, if most users are running from SD cards. They should have went the Android route and treat it more like a phone than a computer
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