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At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

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21–30 of 153 posts

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#21

Excellent news. I just bought a Fujitsu thin client for €18.00 to scratch the Raspberry itch but will definitely try to get my hands on a Pi 4.

Can you run Linux on a thin client? Also where did you buy them for so cheap?

As far as I understand, most thin clients nowadays are just PCs, usually AMD embedded SoCs with very good support for Linux.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#22
post #4

Not sure if rpis are that relevant as of now when there are so many other, usually more performant and overall compelling offers in the same form factor and upstream support to a certain degree.

I agree completely. I've ranted on this a bit on HN before but in many ways the Raspberry Pi is a victim of its own success. It more or less became the "jack of all trades master of none" for a staggering variety of projects and applications - even when it is far from the best approach. I personally cringe when I see people trying to string together a bunch of drives on a shared USB bus for a NAS application, or tryi…

The answer to all of this is "where's the fun in that"? I can afford to pay Amazon The original home computing explosion didn't come about because of the power of those early platforms -- it was because the thrill of accomplishing something under the limitations of a popular platform is the reward early pioneers needed to keep going.

So yeah, the Pi is not ideal for so many use cases, but successfully arm-wrestling this well-known-but-limited platform into serving web traffic or doing something equally useful is why people keep using it.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#23

The shortage ruined the brand for me. Any sort of commercial product based on this cheap platform had supply issues, which caused a pivot. I had an old boss balk at me for suggesting we use Pi's back in 2013, I now see why. Glad to see the gouging finally come to an end!

I need to give it two more years to see how stable the supply really is, before planing to extend on it.

Right now it's basically supporting the old systems to keep those at least running.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#24

The shortage ruined the brand for me. Any sort of commercial product based on this cheap platform had supply issues, which caused a pivot. I had an old boss balk at me for suggesting we use Pi's back in 2013, I now see why. Glad to see the gouging finally come to an end!

The reason hobbyists had shortages was because they allocated supply to businesses to help them stay afloat. Possibly your old boss was not right.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#25

Any rumours of a 5?

No need. The CEO said (in an interview with the "explaining computers" YouTube channel) 2023 will be about fixing supply of existing models. It's reasonable to expect the 5 to arrive in 2024 at the earliest. Personally, I wouldn't expect super fast m2 ports and whatnot. Frankly, at this point I am ready to spend a bit more and get a proper 5800u mini pc or something. Waiting for AMD's Zen 4 APUs to hit the market. Th…

I wouldn't hold my breath for small AMD based boards. For example PC Engines (they make the APU and ALIX boards) has stated that AMD is increasingly difficult to work with as a small manufacturer. And all their old SoC's have been EOLed.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#27
post #16

ARM SBC entry costs have jumped upwards of $100 and low powered Intel machines (used thin clients, nucs, workstations) have become more accessible than ever. When the 4 was brand new, 4 cores/4gb was pretty killer for the entry price. The Pi had an incredible impact but it's pretty obvious it doesn't fit very well into a lot of usecases any more given other options. I hope that over the next few years the Pi foundati…

Yes but when you compare the TDP and compute/watt of such a system compared to an arm sbc it pales in comparison. Being fan-less hence much more compact is another thing they lack as well.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#28
post #8

Any rumours of a 5?

Alas, no. “Don't expect a Pi 5 five next year,” Upton said [in December 2022], explaining that the Pi team sees 2023 as a year to spend “recovering from what just happened to all of us [COVID, supply chain issues].” https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/21/no_rpi_5_2023/

I'm wondering why other manufacturers don't look like impacted as much from the covid supply chain disruptions as they pose to be in every given chance.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#29
post #4

Not sure if rpis are that relevant as of now when there are so many other, usually more performant and overall compelling offers in the same form factor and upstream support to a certain degree.

What are you using these days? Personally I switched pihole and a few other servixes to a docker container on a USFF pc. Still using a pi4 for retro games

I'd like to know also. I've been looking to upgrade a Raspberry Pi 3 that runs a dashboard display and have been checking Raspberry Pi 4 stock, but if there's another device I should be using in the same MSRP range I'd like to have a look.

Re: At last, the Raspberry Pi shortage is finally coming to an end

#30

The shortage ruined the brand for me. Any sort of commercial product based on this cheap platform had supply issues, which caused a pivot. I had an old boss balk at me for suggesting we use Pi's back in 2013, I now see why. Glad to see the gouging finally come to an end!

Just to reinforce what another commentor said, Pis were still being made available to sectors like business and education, so vendors who built products around rpi were still able to operate. We worked on a project in 2021 where we needed around 150 and had no problem sourcing them from a single vendor at MSRP alongside their product.

Of course, that's not what I expected since I'd been personally affected by the shortage to retail, and because the others weren't aware of that, I probably looked worried over nothing when I suggested we explore other SBCs.

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