Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

heyhomepage.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 218 posts

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#131

Post by rambambram »

PaulWaldman wrote: post #118
rambambram wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just saw their website. Definitely an option for when my RPi lets me down, or - more likely - when I need to do heavier stuff. But these Beelink things come with fans... how's the noise?

It's essentially silent, I've only ever heard the fan when I'm within a foot of the unit. I pulled the unit apart and the fan looked pretty standard. There are also models on Amazon that use the N5105 that are passively cooled. I havn't used one, so I'm not sure if there is any throttling going on with those models.

Good to know, thanks!

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#132

Post by rbanffy »

focusedone wrote: post #108
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…

Yep, tried for months to find a Pi4 to replace an old Pi2 for home experimentation. I've only tried a few things needing the GPIO pins, mostly it's just an always-on computer I can proxy through and self host on. But the Pi2 was getting into swap all the time and needed an upgrade. Found a Thinkcentre M600 on ShopGoodwill for $40 with an SSD. Added $10 of RAM and it's honestly a better fit for what I do with it. Craz…

> Thinkcentre M600 on ShopGoodwill for $40

These are, indeed, RPi killers if you don't mind the power consumption and the lack of built-in GPIO.

I have a cluster of HP thin clients running... clustery things.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#133

Post by technofiend »

LordHeini wrote: post #123

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…

>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.

Undeniably correct - but if you use your Pi or any other SBC as a poor man's VDI terminal, in other words, using it to remote into a better computer elsewhere, then it's kind of OK. Personally I still found it too slow and laggy for my taste and instead used an Intel NUC. There's probably a good meet-in-the-middle device available on Aliexpress like the fanless systems people use for firewalls but they too can be pricey (vs a Pi). Would love to see a small ARM device powerful enough to push 4k video but still otherwise fanless, preferably something that could be bolted to the VESA block on a monitor or at least hidden behind the monitor.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#134

Post by StillBored »

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 GPIO on the PI is compromised for any hard realtime usage by the fact its running linux (ignoring what can be done with a lot of extra work with a RT kernel and pinning cores).

For non realtime use, the $10 USB->GPIO ones work fine on any computer with USB.

In fact many of them are just ESP's, and work even better than the pi for hard real-time because you write custom bitbanging ardunio code and send the results/control signal over the USB. They become custom peripherals with a /dev/ttyUSB endpoint.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#135

Post by rambambram »

MattDemers wrote: post #111

>Why should you do this? >Because I was done with the fan noise of my older and more powerful computer. After a while it felt as if a fighter jet was taking off next to me, constantly. I moved my old computer more away from me, but that wasn't enough. :thinking: Feels like this could be fixed by some new fans, or at least an understanding of what GPU/CPU load is. Referencing "buying a new computer" just because of th…

True, could have replaced the fans. Or better, try to replace them and break something (never assembled a computer, no experience here). I didn't want to spend money on new fans and a technician. Another problem was, I needed something working the next day. But the biggest thing was, I wanted to experience fanless. RPi4 made that possible and held up pretty good, which surprised me.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#137

Post by omni »

rambambram wrote: post #135
MattDemers wrote: post #111

>Why should you do this? >Because I was done with the fan noise of my older and more powerful computer. After a while it felt as if a fighter jet was taking off next to me, constantly. I moved my old computer more away from me, but that wasn't enough. :thinking: Feels like this could be fixed by some new fans, or at least an understanding of what GPU/CPU load is. Referencing "buying a new computer" just because of th…

True, could have replaced the fans. Or better, try to replace them and break something (never assembled a computer, no experience here). I didn't want to spend money on new fans and a technician. Another problem was, I needed something working the next day. But the biggest thing was, I wanted to experience fanless. RPi4 made that possible and held up pretty good, which surprised me.

There are fanless full-PC builds, though that would probably require you to build your own computer. Parent's overall point is definitely true though, the idea that you have to go all the way down to a Pi to get a quiet computer is laughable. With a few fans and a decent heatsink you can cool hundreds of watts silently.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#138

Post by nsteel »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #77
hwc wrote: post #37

If someone would build a Linux-friendly competetor to the ARM64 Mac Mini, I would consider that for my home computer. As it is, I either have to stick with x86_64, go to Apple, or have an under-powered RPi.

Raspberry Pi isn’t the fastest ARM SBC. If you want something significantly faster, order the new ROCK5 SBC with 16GB of RAM. Being new, it won’t have the same level of polish and support (which can be extremely important depending on your application) but these are so much faster than the Pi that it can be worth it depending on your use case. Nothing in the SBC world is going to come close to an M1 any time soon, th…

When is it due to actually be available? Announced 10 months ago and seems only started sampling last month. Any evidence they aren't also going to get shafted by the shortages?

And as always, this is the biggest problem with Rock stuff.

> ROCK5 maker Radxa says the board supports Linux kernel 5.10 and will be able to run operating systems including Android 12 and Debian 10 Buster.

Sweet. Debian 10.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#139

Post by haradion »

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.

A little microcontroller with USB support (I like the Raspberry Pi Pico) can help with your GPIO woes.

Re: I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer

#140

Post by nsteel »

LordHeini wrote: post #123

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…

> And my Pi4 collects dust behind the TV

Put it on ebay. Right now.

Post reply on HN