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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?

#31

Post by antongribok »

I used the very first original Pi B when it first came out as a small "shadow IT"-type desktop at work around 2014. We could only use Macs or Windows, and I needed something sane running Linux.

That version is much slower than today's Pi4, and I ended up using it mostly for command line sysadmin type stuff using a terminal and SSH. I used it for 1 year, before switching jobs.

While not running a desktop, today I have 6 Pi4s running a Ceph cluster and serving CephFS in my house. It's actually quite easy to set up, and very usable. Not super fast, because I'm using SMR drives, but definitely very usable as a very reliable NAS. Definitely more reliable than any ZFS setup.

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

#32

Post by gexla »

hkt wrote: post #21

I've done this but got tired of it eventually. I had an 8gb raspberry pi 4. I ran xfce4 under raspbian/raspberry pi OS with lightweight applications - luakit for a browser, claws mail for email, terminal, and a few background processes. I also casted to my TV from Gnomecast and, later, VLC. Coding was all done in micro with a few plugins enabled. Mostly it worked pretty well, but with too many tabs opened it would st…

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.

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

#33

Post by alexk307 »

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…

Could have been the browser? Or the network interface? Did you ever figure out why?

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

#34

Post by agloeregrets »

alexk307 wrote: post #33
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…

Could have been the browser? Or the network interface? Did you ever figure out why?

Doesn't help that the pi 4 has a single-core performance that is 1/5th that of a current smartphone. If you are coming from fast hardware, the pi 4 is quite bad. I would love to see someone make a $99 product in this range with something moderately fast.

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

#35

Post by indymike »

I do use Raspberry Pi 400 for accessing other machines via SSH and browser. Lack of memory really limits being able to replace a lot of desktop workflows, so I still do most of my work on a i7 powered LG Gram 17 that runs Kubuntu. The Pi is significantly slower than four year old i5 MBP and way slower than the i7 for building node apps and compiling Go... but, it's fast enough it could be usable. I do love the keyboard form factor. It is a pretty impressive device for the price, and has this old-school "home computer" vibe to it.

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

#36

Post by netsharc »

alexk307 wrote: post #33
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…

Could have been the browser? Or the network interface? Did you ever figure out why?

Browser engines need a lot of computing to know what color each pixel of a page needs to be, for each pixel: the typeface affects it, the background image of all the parent elements (in case of transparency) affects it, the CSS positioning of the elements affects it (there could be a white title text, but an annoying cookie popup with a semi-dark background means it needs to be displayed as a greyed out text).

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

#37

Post by wlesieutre »

indymike wrote: post #35

I do use Raspberry Pi 400 for accessing other machines via SSH and browser. Lack of memory really limits being able to replace a lot of desktop workflows, so I still do most of my work on a i7 powered LG Gram 17 that runs Kubuntu. The Pi is significantly slower than four year old i5 MBP and way slower than the i7 for building node apps and compiling Go... but, it's fast enough it could be usable. I do love the keyboa…

Form factor has room for improvement https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/transform-raspberry-pi-400-...

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

#38

Post by PaulHoule »

agloeregrets wrote: post #34
alexk307 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could have been the browser? Or the network interface? Did you ever figure out why?

Doesn't help that the pi 4 has a single-core performance that is 1/5th that of a current smartphone. If you are coming from fast hardware, the pi 4 is quite bad. I would love to see someone make a $99 product in this range with something moderately fast.

People have long been fascinated with "alternative" architectures for general purpose computing but most of the time you pay a little bit less (1/2) but pay dearly in terms of performance (more than 1/5 compared to a low end laptop.)

It has a lot to do with why cable boxes suck.

ARM is the first architecture in 20 years that competes with x86 on reasonably priced machines. (e.g. IBM POWER and IBM z are pretty quick but you can't afford them)

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

#40

Post by Wowfunhappy »

PaulHoule wrote: post #38
agloeregrets wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't help that the pi 4 has a single-core performance that is 1/5th that of a current smartphone. If you are coming from fast hardware, the pi 4 is quite bad. I would love to see someone make a $99 product in this range with something moderately fast.

People have long been fascinated with "alternative" architectures for general purpose computing but most of the time you pay a little bit less (1/2) but pay dearly in terms of performance (more than 1/5 compared to a low end laptop.) It has a lot to do with why cable boxes suck. ARM is the first architecture in 20 years that competes with x86 on reasonably priced machines. (e.g. IBM POWER and IBM z are pretty quick b…

> ARM is the first architecture in 20 years that competes with x86 on reasonably priced machines. (e.g. IBM POWER and IBM z are pretty quick but you can't afford them)

What about the PPC Macs? Yes, they were bad enough that Apple had to switch to x86—not exactly a ringing endorsement—but I'd say they were at least somewhat competitive, no?

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