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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?

#121

Post by trynewideas »

D13Fd wrote: post #114
freedomben wrote: post #85

My son currently does and has for about a year. I also have for short periods as computers were "in the shop." He's used a couple different pis with varying success. At least 4 GB of RAM is a must. The distro you run also matters a great deal. The Pi4 with 8 GB is very usable as a main computer. I'm a Fedora person normally but for the Pi Raspbian is always my choice because it is so well optimized for low memory dev…

This is fascinating to me. 4GB of memory is not enough, on an OS "optimized for low memory devices"? What crazy world do we live in? I remember browsing the web with 64 mb of RAM, upgraded from 16 MB , and a 100 MHz CPU. I'm not saying you're wrong in any sense. I'm just marveling at the state of memory use in computing.

a Pi would probably zoom through browsing HTML 2.0 websites made in 1995 without much memory fuss, even in a modern browser. there just aren't many such websites

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

#122

Post by magios »

as others have mentioned, the raspberry pi 4 is pretty slow at decoding video, but the 4gb or 8gb does work well as a single or dual screen development computer. however, I have have been using a jetson tx1, and later tx2 dev kit as my computer since 2016, as those were better than what was available at the time. i also use a jetson nano 4gb, with patched mpv to play one or more 1080p60 videos with acceleration, local or streaming with no issues. i assume the jetson 2gb would work similarly, just use a window manager like i3 on the raspi4 and jetson boards. also I believe the upcoming orin nx boards with 6 core with 8gb and 8 core with 16gb lpddr5 will very nice.

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

#123

Post by maximus-decimus »

everdrive wrote: post #120
freedomben wrote: post #85

My son currently does and has for about a year. I also have for short periods as computers were "in the shop." He's used a couple different pis with varying success. At least 4 GB of RAM is a must. The distro you run also matters a great deal. The Pi4 with 8 GB is very usable as a main computer. I'm a Fedora person normally but for the Pi Raspbian is always my choice because it is so well optimized for low memory dev…

I have no problem browsing the web on a thinkpad laptop with 4gb of RAM. I’ve always suspected that the issue with Pis is that they fall over when they try to write to swap. The SD card can’t handle it. The RAM isn’t really the limitation, it’s using an SD card for swap. Can anyone confirm?

I wonder how much zram would help (compresses part of your ram). It would reduce caching be then your cpu would need to decpompress a lot.

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

#124

Post by ip26 »

ulnarkressty wrote: post #105

It's like using a mid-range phone as your computer, because, well, that's basically what it is. Everything moves slower than one is used to. By far the biggest annoyance is the hugely bloated web. Although video plays fine due to hardware decoding, loading normal web pages is measured in seconds. Overall I don't recommend it. Might be better with a slightly higher-powered NUC (Intel Gold and above) or a mid-range lap…

Much like mid range phones, it's perfectly usable, and leagues better than anything I had access to as a kid. One way to think of it would be as a point on the cost vs benefit curve. There is a region of the c/b curve that is almost flat. There is also a region where the curve is very steep. The Pi is on a steep part of the curve.

If it's the very best you can get, of course, it's still awesome.

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

#125

Post by sarang23592 »

yboris wrote: post #104

Not as my main computer, but as my digital piano sidekick, a USB output from the piano goes to my Raspberry Pi which runs Pianoteq (makes the piano sound like a $100k piano). Optionally, the Pi lights up some addressable LEDs coinciding with keys. https://github.com/youfou/pianoteq-pi & https://github.com/whyboris/Digital-Piano-LED

This seems interesting. Would you mind sharing some of the pics of your setup

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

#126

Post by shofetim »

Syonyk wrote: post #101

I've been using Pis around my office (and various other ARM small board computers of similar capabilities) for quite a few years now, and as they've become more capable, I use them for more. I've spilled quite a bit of digital ink on the variety of systems as well (the tag includes some of the other systems too): https://www.sevarg.net/tag/raspberrypi/ Computers I've used as "desktop grade systems" over the past 5 ye…

How was your experience with the PineBook Pro?

I've been experimenting with ARM systems for the last year or so — changing how I compute to fit into the tighter limits of the SBCs etc. The governor settings and disk IO seem to be the most important points.

I've been eyeing the PBP (once they come back into production). What is the battery life like with the governor set to performance?

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

#128

Post by 3np »

NegatioN wrote: post #22

For the people who answer this, I'd like to know if they booted from an sd-card or ssd-device as well. I noticed a huge difference in the responsiveness when using my Pi 4 (only via ssh and with a terminal) for some machine learning jobs after I switched to boot from an external SSD. For Pi4s made in the last couple of years, booting from ssd seems to be a built-in feature, without any need for flashing anything on t…

Indeed. There are also SBCs in similar price- and spec range from other vendors but with SATA or even m2 PCIe interfaces, which is generally a lot more reliable than gambling on dodgy USB3 adapters.

Alternatively, CM4 (or equivalent) on an appropriate board.

(I used one of those as a workstation for a month or so; worked fine enough, the only major friction was that I had to be mindful of closing browser tabs)

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

#129

Post by bombcar »

noud wrote: post #127

I use my Raspberry Pi 3 as my home RAID system (with 4 x 8 TB hdd). Not very fast, but definitely cheap with a low energy usage.

How do you connect the drives? USB?

I've long been considering switching my NAS to something like a Pi + SATA disks.

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

#130

Post by [deleted] »

D13Fd wrote: post #114
freedomben wrote: post #85

My son currently does and has for about a year. I also have for short periods as computers were "in the shop." He's used a couple different pis with varying success. At least 4 GB of RAM is a must. The distro you run also matters a great deal. The Pi4 with 8 GB is very usable as a main computer. I'm a Fedora person normally but for the Pi Raspbian is always my choice because it is so well optimized for low memory dev…

This is fascinating to me. 4GB of memory is not enough, on an OS "optimized for low memory devices"? What crazy world do we live in? I remember browsing the web with 64 mb of RAM, upgraded from 16 MB , and a 100 MHz CPU. I'm not saying you're wrong in any sense. I'm just marveling at the state of memory use in computing.

[deleted]
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