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I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

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Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#81

Post by rambambram »

password4321 wrote: post #59

Apparently the two motivators here were noise and price (pre-owned hardware). What would be best if the primary motivator was reducing electricity for a solar-powered setup? I assume e-ink would be the best screen, though it costs a pretty penny for a respectable screen size. It might be worth using a laptop to have the battery taken care of.

Good question. If having a daily desktop environment is still your use case, than maybe a 7 inch (touch) screen from Waveshare is an option? I have one that has a good color screen and says it's also low power consumption, but I never compared to low power alternatives like an e-ink screen.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#82

Post by eliasmacpherson »

I tried using it daily as you do, but youtube had stability issues in Chromium and Firefox for ages, so now I rarely use it. When it works, great, when not, I'm not spending any more time trying to figure out why.

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323782

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323640&start=...

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#83

Post by doublepg23 »

password4321 wrote: post #59

Apparently the two motivators here were noise and price (pre-owned hardware). What would be best if the primary motivator was reducing electricity for a solar-powered setup? I assume e-ink would be the best screen, though it costs a pretty penny for a respectable screen size. It might be worth using a laptop to have the battery taken care of.

I would definitely try an e-ink in person if you haven’t yet. They have gotten much better but even the top of the line models have woeful refresh rates.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#84

Post by jacob019 »

josefresco wrote: post #31

This is nice but I can't even buy one! I've been "casually" shopping for a Raspberry Pi for a while now and it seems almost impossible without assistance from a bot, or immense effort.

Right, and while the RPi ecosystem is fantastic, there are better processors for the price. I've been patiently waiting for the RK3588. I think it's the first ARM chip that will make a suitable desktop replacement for me, with dual monitors. The Orange Pi 5 will be a good value, if it ever drops. The Rock 5 Model B is available now, but the price is too high. I recently bought an Inovato Quadra. It's a TV box with Linux preinstalled for $30, comes with a nice case too. I've also been buying old chromeboxes on eBay and flashing them with mr.chromebox's EUFI firmware to make them into regular computers. It's just amazing what you can get for $30 these days.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#85

Post by satysin »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #82

I tried using it daily as you do, but youtube had stability issues in Chromium and Firefox for ages, so now I rarely use it. When it works, great, when not, I'm not spending any more time trying to figure out why. https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323782 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=323640&start=...

I've had much better luck and performance using yt-dlp and mpv to watch YouTube videos on a Pi. It isn't an amazing experience as you would imagine but it is much better than trying to do it in the browser.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#86

Post by PaulWaldman »

What is the point for a consumer to use a Raspberry PI 4 today?

I recently purchased a mini PC with an Intel N5105, 16GB of Ram, 512GB NVME SSD, two gigabit ethernet ports, two HDMI ports, many USB ports, and Wifi 6. This system was $180, all in. You can't find a Pi 4, much less one with equivalent specs for anywhere near this price. If you can find it, an 8GB PI4 is $75 and then you need to buy the case, power supply, sometimes storage, etc.

The N5105 system when under full load is only drawing 7 watts, I've seen it as low as 4 watts when idle. The Pi 4 uses a BCM2711, which according to Passmark, is about 4X slower than an Intel N5105.

I do think the PI is great from the hobbyist and industrial perspective, but to just use it as an inexpensive PC seems like a waste.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#87

Post by adrian_b »

jcelerier wrote: post #60
rr888 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> audio/video/photo production No one I know does this. The biggest problem for me is to use our corporate remote desktop you need spyware that only works on Windows and Mac.

This is wild, huge majority of people I know personally who use computers want to do at least one of these things once in a while. Or if not this, some CAD work, 3d modeling, and other computationally expensive things

I agree with you, but all those tasks alternate with many hours during which a personal computer is used only for reading and editing documents, or Internet browsing, or audio listening or video watching.

For the latter activities, a computer bigger than an Intel NUC or similar computers is never needed.

I do CAD work, compilation of large software projects and other tasks that need a fast computer, but I do these on a couple of big tower servers, which I wake up only when necessary.

As a PC, I use an Intel NUC, but now there are more alternatives to it than ever, e.g. there are several models of small computers with AMD Rembrandt Ryzen 6000 CPUs.

The NUC-like computers are faster than the cheap laptops having the same CPUs and they also have a much more complete set of peripheral ports.

I frequently see comments that there are laptops which are cheaper than the NUC-like computers, but those cheap laptops are typically garbage that I would not use even if I would receive them for free. A laptop comparable in performance, versatility and reliability with a $1000 NUC-like computer may cost $3000 or more.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#88

Post by justin66 »

rambambram wrote: post #63
talkingtab wrote: post #47

I use a Raspberry Pi 4/8G as my maine (ha ha) development machine. I have a special case, which is that I mostly ssh into my websites hosted by digital ocean. I usually have several terminal sessions (+3), some local terminal sessions and firefox. I use the pi mainly because I can have two monitors at once. I just installed ubuntu 22.10 desktop and it appears to work well. I use ubuntu mainely because it is what I ru…

> The best thing I did was to have it boot from a cheap kingston 120GB ssd ($18 now). Makes a world of difference in speed. Nice. I also want to try this, just to get the most speed and performance out of it, without giving in reliability or durability. I should also check out Jeff Geerling's comparison of different MicroSD cards for the RPi.

If you want to avoid sacrificing reliability, get a Samsung portable SSD. SSD-SATA dongles and SD cards will all represent a step down in reliability.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#89

Post by abudabi123 »

giuliomagnifico wrote: post #2

> I use a Raspberry Pi 4 (with 8GB of RAM) as my daily desktop computer. I browse the internet, read and send e-mails, program software, edit photos, create images, watch Youtube videos and play games on it. Without any significant problems. Yes for those lite tasks is fine, and you can also save some watts. The things are different when you want to do audio/video/photo production.

On the RasPi4 8GB there is this 4MB jpeg file that crashes Krita but will render slowly in Falkon.

https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/150000/15...

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#90

Post by rambambram »

PaulWaldman wrote: post #86

What is the point for a consumer to use a Raspberry PI 4 today? I recently purchased a mini PC with an Intel N5105, 16GB of Ram, 512GB NVME SSD, two gigabit ethernet ports, two HDMI ports, many USB ports, and Wifi 6. This system was $180, all in. You can't find a Pi 4, much less one with equivalent specs for anywhere near this price. If you can find it, an 8GB PI4 is $75 and then you need to buy the case, power suppl…

I used it because I already had one.

What brand is your system from? Or isn't it pre-assembled? The price of $180 sounds perfect for an increase in performance and still low power requirements.

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