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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?

#181

Post by [deleted] »

rwalle wrote: post #99
colechristensen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really don't though, they could do it just fine in 1995. Browsers have bloated into crazy complex machines though that do way more than rendering some text and graphics. The simple rendering is not why browsers are slow on RPis.

Enough of such comments. Obviously you have never worked much in the front end or the web user experience, and don't understand the complexity or the difficulty of such technologies. Anyone saying "things were fine in 1995" is ignoring how non-interactive, non-intuitive how web pages were, and how much more pleasant it is to look at a web page and get the information today. It is true that some web pages are using un…

[deleted]

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

#182

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

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…

Curious- were your struggles with libraries due to armv7 or armv8 architecture? Raspbian (now Raspberry Pi OS) has started shipping an arm64 version as of a few months ago that solved a lot of those woes for me.

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

#183

Post by sitkack »

sitkack wrote: post #164
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.

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

Instead of setup.py, it could be called, local_hardware_install.py or somesuch.

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

#184

Post by nonamenoslogan »

LeFantome wrote: post #135
leros wrote: post #28

I tried. I just wanted a machine on my workbench to run a web browser. I got the best Raspberry Pi, a case, and plugged it into an old 24" monitor. Cost me about $80-100. It worked fine. It could even play a 1080p YouTube video. However, everything lagged. The most painful thing was that it took several seconds to render a website when it's normally instantaneous. I found it quite frustrating to use, so I ended up bu…

My wife bought a 2008 iMac for $50 but never used it. One day my laptop broke and I put Manjaro Linux on the iMac, hoping I could use it for a few days knowing it would suck. The screen was nice but it only had 6 GB of RAM, a spinning hard drive, and a Core Duo processor. Thing is, I still use it all the time. It is the computer I use most often for Zoom and Teams. Web browsing is very good. I use the latest releases…

I'm still using a 2006ish ThinkPad with a CoreDuo in it and only 2Gb of RAM nearly daily, there is still a lot of computing power out there in some of these oldies if one is willing to try.

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

#185

Post by e3bc54b2 »

randomopining wrote: post #68
cols wrote: post #65

I have a Pi 4 (8gb) that I use as a home web server. I use a USB flash drive for the OS (Raspbian)/storage and run Apache on it. I have it running in a case with heat sink and a fan. It's quite a useful device for my purposes but it simply isn't up to the task of general computing. I notice big lags when trying to do literally anything. Even just opening up a code editor (VS Code) and a single browser tab you'd think…

server that does what? is there anything good to do with a home server? like host a webpage?

I have a Pi that runs Pi-hole and Syncthing. As an extra always on backup node, Pi is pretty much perfect.

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

#186

Post by Alan_Dillman »

sitkack wrote: post #162
Alan_Dillman wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree!

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

#187

Post by Jaruzel »

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…

Arch Linux.

I've recently started playing with Arch again, after being fully on the Debian bandwagon. This time around, I found getting it onto a blank HDD, and up as far as twm (with personal customisations) way more easier that I remembered. Compared to Debian on the same aging test laptop, it's SO light and responsive. I'm definitely going to invest more time into building out a good lightweight install.

https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/broadcom/raspberry-...

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

#188

Post by ktaylora »

I've had similar experiences to what's been offered in other posts. Getting off the SD card and onto external storage is essential. The machine is almost useable, chromium lags a bit, but for other tasks on the CLI, it's quite efficient. I've had great luck using docker and postgresql and using the RPi 4 as a dedicated SQL server that my work laptop throws queries at.

Has anyone tried working with CM4 and it's on-board eMMC as a daily driver? I imagine some of the bulkiness of having to lug around an external drive for the OS might be solved this way. But I've not tried it.

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

#189

Post by washadjeffmad »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #82
nbernard wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swapping on the SD card is a nightmare. I found out that disabling the swap actually leads to a better experience, even if it means that firefox gets killed from time to time. [This comment was written on a rpi4, btw.]

Would swap on zram work? I've used that to help with low-memory situations, but I'm not sure if the Pi's CPU is fast enough to avoid it being a different bottleneck.

It does work, and it's how I ran the same pi when it was a host to a particularly bloated java app prone to exceeding its -Xmx.

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

#190

Post by Terry_Roll »

Willox wrote: post #119
Terry_Roll wrote: post #118

Tried, but there is a lot of caching of processes in windows to make the experience faster and smoother. Most websites are heavy and what I mean by that is they have a lot of javascript, so its not just downloading stuff, its then having to run that stuff which is an overhead the rpi cant quite handle. I dont know if the javascript executing on the rpi can be optimised but I suspect the javascript is better optimised…

> I suspect there is a bit of AI in windows which predicts when someone clicks a mouse button that they actually wanted to click the mouse button over the screen button, ie something to improve the accuracy and experience of windows. Could you elaborate on which kind of situations you think you have seen this in? I really don't think I've seen this happen.

Repetitive mouse clicks going in and out of a few MDI child windows.

A list of things, select one, new window popup, do some check box ticking with the mouse, click the window close button (top right) , select next item in the list and repeat.

I saw this in a version of XP and havent seen it since. How I knew, was I deliberately didnt click on the checkbox but near to it and did the same with the close button in the top right of the window, and they both worked like I had clicked on them properly!

In a way that repetitive situation is perfect for AI.

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