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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

#121

Post by StillBored »

turtlebits wrote: post #116
easygenes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For something you use as a main computer, it's hard to see how the time lost on something 3X slower can ever justify the ~$100 saved. At least for anyone who spends a decent amount of time on a computer and is in the developed world with a job.

Productivity doesn't scale with speed, or else everyone would be using Threadrippers. OP might be perfectly fine with a pi.

There is a floor where browsing the web is _painful_, and the pi is definitely in that category on any site that isn't hackernews levels of javascript. I challenge you to give amazon or ebay a try on it, or just spend a bit of time on youtube. Things you take for granted, like being able to run videos full screen won't happen on the pi if your monitor is HD or better.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#122

Post by mattkrause »

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…

GPIO pins.

If you want to connect a "regular PC" to the real world, you can get a USB DAQ but even the cheapo LabJack, NI or MCC models are at least a hundred bucks.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#123

Post by LordHeini »

While a Pi can be used to browse the internet a bit and write some text, i would not want to endure the low performance for anything even slightly more heavy weight.

I absolutely hate to wait for slow compile times, long startup times, slow disk writes and laggy browsers. All of which you will get on a Pi.

The sad truth is that for no reason a lot of modern software is super bloated and eats resources like crazy. And you can not avoid those in work related environments.

Things like elastic search, a bunch of docker containers, an IDE, multiple browsers, Thunderbird, Slack and so on... must run in parallel without any hiccup.

And my case it has to drive at least 2 monitors, without any complaints, all while video conferencing is running.

My base memory usage is around at 10-15 gb all the time (i am using ubuntu with awesome wm) good luck cramming that in the 8gb of the Pi and a swap on a SD card (hope you got an SSD).

Modern computers are super silent anyway so who cares if the Pi is quieter than the AC or the cars outside the window.

As it stands Pi are ridiculously expensive nowadays so there is really no reason to put up with a subpar solution.

Just get a cheap (used) workstation or mini PC which costs the same and is multiple times as powerful. If it is too loud replace the fans with silent ones those are cheap too...

My Pi3 is now driving my 3d Printer which is a more appropriate use case.

And my Pi4 collects dust behind the TV because it is a bit too slow to serve as a media computer at 4k.

I bought those years ago (60€ or so) and would feel completely ripped of if i had paid the current prices.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#124

Post by StillBored »

easygenes wrote: post #106
adrian_b wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 4 big Cortex-X1 cores and 4 medium Cortex-A78 cores, the new MS Developer Kit should be much faster than the Qualcomm RB5, which has 4 Cortex-A77 cores. Also the price, at $600, is decent in comparison with the excessive prices requested by NVIDIA for the faster of the Orin variants. Unfortunately, the new MS Developer Kit also includes a Microsoft Pluton, and it is very likely that Pluton is configured to allow…

The Lenovo X13s is basically a laptop version of the new dev kit, and it seems people are running Linux on it successfully [1][2], so hopefully they haven't done anything different with the dev kit. 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/vh1xse/setup_linux_on_x13s_snapdragon_thinkpad_megathread/ 2: https://youtu.be/YWRbNogRBTw&t=1755

Linux on it is very broken in any number of situations, its basically at the level of the M1, which is at the moment probably a better choice if you want a 1/2 working machine.

Things you take for granted as working, and performing well, won't. Putting it another way, its at an early stage of bring up, on x86 you buy a laptop it will tend to mostly work in linux with a problem here/there that will likely get resolved over the next year or two. This is the same, only the level of busted is much worse, enough you probably won't want to actually use it as a daily driver.

It's a fine windows machine, and virtualizes linux just fine, but the same can be said of the M1 as well.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#125

Post by easygenes »

StillBored wrote: post #121
turtlebits wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Productivity doesn't scale with speed, or else everyone would be using Threadrippers. OP might be perfectly fine with a pi.

There is a floor where browsing the web is _painful_, and the pi is definitely in that category on any site that isn't hackernews levels of javascript. I challenge you to give amazon or ebay a try on it, or just spend a bit of time on youtube. Things you take for granted, like being able to run videos full screen won't happen on the pi if your monitor is HD or better.

Yeah, this is basically what I mean. Personally, I think the performance of SBC boards with Celeron N5105 is my baseline for "acceptable" performance for a desktop. Anything slower I will deliberately avoid due to the jank and inconvenience factor.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#126

Post by easygenes »

mattkrause wrote: post #122
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…

GPIO pins. If you want to connect a "regular PC" to the real world, you can get a USB DAQ but even the cheapo LabJack, NI or MCC models are at least a hundred bucks.

The LattePanda 3 Delta [1] has a Celeron N5105 and RasPi levels of GPIO pins.

  1: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2594.html

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#127

Post by iLoveOncall »

naikrovek wrote: post #101
iLoveOncall wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figures of speech are forbidden now?

yes that's exactly what I said. I said, exactly , "figures of speech are forbidden, now." and you definitely haven't made a crazy leap at all.

That was a figure of speech.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#128

Post by mattkrause »

easygenes wrote: post #126
mattkrause wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPIO pins. If you want to connect a "regular PC" to the real world, you can get a USB DAQ but even the cheapo LabJack, NI or MCC models are at least a hundred bucks.

The LattePanda 3 Delta [1] has a Celeron N5105 and RasPi levels of GPIO pins. 1: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2594.html

But it's $200 more...(but it's also in stock).

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#129

Post by tpxl »

yrgulation wrote: post #32
checkyoursudo wrote: post #6

I cannot buy a Pi 4 (8GB) locally at all. Amazon appears to offer one for 200-250 euros. For 200 euros or less, I can get a NUC-style mini PC at my local electronics store that is more powerful. I wouldn't mind trying out a Pi-as-a-PC, but new models either just aren't available or aren't reasonably priced.

A quick google search shows raspberry pi 4 8gb ram selling at 140 eur in italy, 100 eur in hungary. If you live in the eu why do you limit your searches to one country? It feels like those people complaining they cant find ps5s or gpus yet i comfortably sourced mine from various countries, new, at a decent price, even during the pandemic. If you own a small ltd you can even buy them vat free.

Galagomarket seems to have the RPi 4B 8GB in stock for 99€. Don't know where they ship, but the website is translated into Croation, English, German, Italian, Serbian, Hungarian, Slovenian and Slovakian. I bought from them in Feb 2021 and got mine delivered quickly.

https://www.galagomarket.com//item/display/1953

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#130

Post by philistine »

adrian_b wrote: post #68
easygenes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the Microsoft ARM Developer Kit that was just released might be a good option. [1] I also personally have used a Qualcomm RB5 [2][3] since last year and can say that it is quite snappy, though the official image is ancient and the modern Debian Linux image Linaro works on for it was still rather buggy. The most robust option is likely Nvidia's AGX Orin Developer Kit [4][5], which Nvidia maintains 20.04 Ub…

With 4 big Cortex-X1 cores and 4 medium Cortex-A78 cores, the new MS Developer Kit should be much faster than the Qualcomm RB5, which has 4 Cortex-A77 cores. Also the price, at $600, is decent in comparison with the excessive prices requested by NVIDIA for the faster of the Orin variants. Unfortunately, the new MS Developer Kit also includes a Microsoft Pluton, and it is very likely that Pluton is configured to allow…

Looking at the images, it uses a barrel-plug looking connector for power. Is the power supply of this device external?
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