[HN Gopher] I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer
___________________________________________________________________
I use a Raspberry Pi as my daily computer
Author : rambambram
Score : 156 points
Date : 2022-10-28 10:24 UTC (12 hours ago)
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| christkv wrote:
| Steam deck is a good option as well and you have great control
| out of the box of power draw.
| brnt wrote:
| Although Pi's aren't obtainable for $35 anymore, a Deck is in a
| different price category. I prefer used SFF machines.
| jerf wrote:
| Running on reduced power is not even close to hard, what with the
| powerful monstrosities our modern systems are. The only really
| tricky bit is to not try to push too much stuff through the
| graphics pipelines (higher res graphics is effectively O(n^2) as
| resolution increases), or use code that gets too clever spending
| lots of CPU for marginal stuff like pretty animations or
| something. An RPi4 is comfortably more powerful than anything I
| had prior to 2010, and if you've got decent solid state storage
| on it you could argue even past that.
|
| It really _ought_ to be snappy and very effective, for everything
| except maybe the web browser, and that 's more the fault of
| bloated web sites than the computer or the browser in my opinion.
| This _ought_ to be nothing special, just what people expect.
| rambambram wrote:
| True. And that's why I realized again today why I'm so
| positively surprised by the fact that the RPi actually _can_ do
| all of the (basic) stuff I want from my desktop computer.
| eric4smith wrote:
| Linux is just "almost" there.
|
| I could probably use it for my daily programming environment -
| Elixir, PostgreSQL, Vim, Firefox.
|
| But then my job takes a turn... creative. Document manipulation,
| convert multiple Images into a PDF, easy screenshots and then
| make a thumbnail with that. Sign docs with my signature. Access
| to apps like Pixemator. Share files easily. Dropbox. It's just
| easier and more productive.
|
| It's hard to not have Mac Preview when you need it.
|
| And that's why I can't finally switch over to Linux.
|
| An no, Gimp is not an alternative. Dropbox alternatives are just
| more difficult to use. Just so many little things are missing.
|
| To be fair, windows does not have a tool like Preview and that's
| why I can't use windows either.
| rambambram wrote:
| I don't agree on the Dropbox part (bash script with rsync does
| the job for me) or the GIMP part (although I had some problems
| exporting as a proper PDF for professional printing tasks), but
| heavy creative work with audio/video would also drive me away
| from the RPi. I've been preparing for the day I have to leave
| my RPi because of changing work, but that day didn't come for
| over a year now and the RPi still runs.
| mazugrin2 wrote:
| Does Dropbox no longer provide a native Linux client? When I
| used Dropbox it worked really well.
| nso wrote:
| Check out Windows 11s new Peek feature
| joshuaissac wrote:
| Is it that different from the existing 'Preview pane' in
| Windows Explorer?
|
| https://www.windowslatest.com/2022/04/07/windows-11-is-
| getti...
|
| https://www.zubairalexander.com/blog/preview-pane-a-cool-
| new...
| BeefWellington wrote:
| I do literally all of those things but Mac Preview.
| sevenf0ur wrote:
| Flameshot is dope for screenshots.
|
| Gimp can be tough for beginners. I always fumble around before
| watching a tutorial. Can be annoying having to watch a tutorial
| just to change the color of a layer.
| julianlam wrote:
| I like flameshot too, but I despise having to hunt for the
| clipboard or floppy disk icon every time I take a screenshot.
| Latty wrote:
| Dropbox has (and as far as I'm aware, always has had) full
| Linux support?
| hwc wrote:
| 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.
| easygenes wrote:
| 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 Ubuntu
| images for [6]. 1:
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-dev-
| kit-2023/94K0P67W7581 2:
| https://developer.qualcomm.com/qualcomm-robotics-rb5-kit
| 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RArzm3h_0vg 4:
| https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded-
| systems/jetson-orin/ 5:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFgsOeHMAW4 6:
| https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/jetson-linux
| adrian_b wrote:
| 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 only Windows to boot.
|
| Otherwise, I would have also been tempted by it, because all
| the previous ARM-based alternatives have been either very
| slow, like Raspberry Pi, or very expensive in comparison with
| the computers with Intel or AMD CPUs having similar
| performance, like the Qualcomm and NVIDIA development kits.
| easygenes wrote:
| 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: htt
| ps://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/vh1xse/setup_linux_
| on_x13s_snapdragon_thinkpad_megathread/ 2:
| https://youtu.be/YWRbNogRBTw&t=1755
| StillBored wrote:
| 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.
| philistine wrote:
| Looking at the images, it uses a barrel-plug looking
| connector for power. Is the power supply of this device
| external?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| 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, though. The fastest ARM SoCs just don't end up in
| SBCs.
| rambambram wrote:
| Looked into it and seems worth a try somewhere in the future.
| The active community of Raspberry Pi users everywhere online
| helped me tremendously while setting up and troubleshooting
| my RPi, that was definitely a consideration to stick with
| RPi.
| nsteel wrote:
| 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.
| nextos wrote:
| Why ARM specifically? Many Linux packages are not ported to
| ARM. Furthermore, non-Apple ARM CPUs are much slower.
|
| There are lots of fanless x86_64 options that are also energy
| efficient if you are willing to buy from small manufacturers or
| stick a fanless case yourself.
|
| The M1 performs so well partly because it uses a very advanced
| fabrication process.
|
| A modern Ryzen is going to have comparable single-core
| performance, better multi-core performance and slightly higher
| energy usage.
| easygenes wrote:
| Yeah, compatibility for x86 is much better. If you want a
| cheap fanless sbc-style setup then the best options today are
| likely Celeron N5105 or Pentium N6005 based systems (e.g.
| MeLE Quieter3 or Odroid-H3+). They are around $300 and far
| more performant and much better connectivity (i.e. they have
| 8x PCIe-3 lanes) vs similarly priced ARM systems.
|
| The closest ARM systems in price and performance are the new
| RK3588 based ones like the Khadas Edge 2 or ROCK 5B, but
| those really are only practical if you really need the NPU
| and MIPI camera inputs they provide. They carry only a minor
| power efficiency edge (max draw around 12W vs maybe 18W for
| the x86 boards), are compromised in software compatibility,
| and are limited in IO (i.e. either PCIe-2 only or PCIe-3 but
| with only 4 lanes).
| easygenes wrote:
| Those x86 chips are an older generation as well. I'd keep
| an eye out for i3-1215u based boards soon if you want
| something that can still be fanless and tiny but has more
| oomph.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| I have never heard of fanless x86_64 boards. Can you share
| some examples please?
| nextos wrote:
| This blog discusses tons of x86_64 fanless designs, as well
| as other architectures: https://www.fanlesstech.com
| Symbiote wrote:
| I have an Intel NUC in a fanless case.
|
| An older version of one of these: https://www.akasa.com.tw/
| update.php?tpl=product%2Fproduct.li...
| a9h74j wrote:
| Probably underpowered for your needs, but within a year or two
| I am expecting used Chromebooks to be up-to-date enough to
| include the current Linux (e.g. Debian) support. So perhaps $50
| and will include keyboard, screen, and ca 5W idle consumption.
| adhoc_slime wrote:
| you could do a lot of things to reduce fan noise in your
| computer, but I appreciate this perspective. We constantly over-
| estimate how powerful a machine we need (probably because of the
| bad software we run) and underestimate how versatile and powerful
| a small SBC can be.
| [deleted]
| akeck wrote:
| I use both a NUC Debian server and an 8GB Rpi. I've been
| pleasantly surprised how much day-to-day stuff I get done on pi
| lately.
| MattDemers wrote:
| >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 this is kind of overkill.
| rambambram wrote:
| 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.
| omni wrote:
| 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.
| rambambram wrote:
| It seems you miss the point of my post. I had the thing
| lying around. And it is indeed laughable, I laugh my ass
| off since this little silent computer is still going
| strong, without me giving up too much of my workflow.
| MattDemers wrote:
| Hey, if it works, it works (sorry if my comment came off
| as snarky). For reference in the future, Noctua fans are
| typically a highly-rated cheap/quiet fan product.
| rambambram wrote:
| No prob. Thanks for pointing to Noctua fans.
| nsteel wrote:
| For anyone in the UK and desperate, there is some "refurbished"
| Pi 4 and 3B stock at https://www.okdo.com/c/pi-shop/the-
| raspberry-pi/ it's not RRP but there's a PSU and case included.
|
| For the record, I've never seen/heard of this site before today.
| They also sell Rock SBCs (and also in stock).
| animitronix wrote:
| Nice article, but pointless until they're cheaply and widely
| available again.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I use mine as a very nice thin client:
| https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/10/23/1700
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| > 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.
| rambambram wrote:
| Of course! But I still was positively surprised that GIMP,
| Youtube and even Kdenlive worked flawlessly on the thing.
| jerf wrote:
| Yeah. "Production", implying a high standard of professional
| quality using a base of uncompressed 4K or 8K might be a bad
| idea, sure, or trying to run a live event with half-a-dozen
| input streams and live streaming back out to the internet.
|
| But plenty of uses of video editing would still be perfectly
| possible on an RPi4. It might be noticeably faster on a
| "real" desktop, but it would be perfectly doable, especially
| if you were working in less than 1080P for some reason, like
| a DVD source video.
| anthk wrote:
| A DVD resolution can be handled for edition even under a
| Pentium III or a Rasbperry B+.
| doubled112 wrote:
| It has been a few years, but I used to do all of these things
| (GIMP, YouTube, Kdenlive) on a Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM
|
| Why wouldn't they work on a Pi 4 with higher specs?
| anthk wrote:
| 4k and 8k video. With 720p OFC a G4 macbook or some bumped
| up dual Pentium III with Cinelerra/Cinepaint under Linux
| and a Geforce 3 was more than enough.
| rambambram wrote:
| I don't know, but still, I was surprised.
|
| Maybe I do know and it has to do with software bloat? I
| don't find it hard to believe that the software you ran on
| your Pentium was less bloated somehow.
| rr888 wrote:
| > 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.
| jcelerier wrote:
| 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
| contracertainty wrote:
| I'm gonna second gp, I don't know anyone who does
| photo/video editing, cad/cam or 3D modeling.
|
| In fact, I know more people with > 3 pi's than I do coders.
| People love them and use them for all sorts. But I don't
| know anyone who does any of those things.
| adrian_b wrote:
| 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.
| abudabi123 wrote:
| 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...
| notjtrig wrote:
| I use a KVM extender and keep my desktops in the server room.
| forinti wrote:
| I recently bought an Android TV Box (Quad-core, 4GB of RAM) just
| to see if I could use it as a remote terminal.
|
| I turns out to be quite practical and fast. The only gotcha is
| that DNS doesn't work on the VPN and I have to log on to my
| company computer via its IP.
|
| My feeling is that any little quad-core SBC with 8GB of RAM would
| be quite adequate for remote work and maybe most of my home
| needs.
| nudpiedo wrote:
| I did that for a while when my previous laptop broke. It was fine
| with a lightweight linux desktop but it was quite slow using an
| ultrawide screen and horribly slow for some compilations, but it
| felt like an "almost there" concept, just arrive to the office
| and turn on the screen.
|
| With a normal resolution and in a cloud IDE environment or
| interpreted only languages like python could have perfectly
| worked, also for everyone who doesn't need exotic binaries.
|
| Some thoughts I had were also, that I could have set up a server-
| web IDE on it and work on the way with a tablet and a keyboard
| without rely on a third party cloud, but again, I needed to
| compile binaries.
| LordHeini wrote:
| 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 (60EUR or so) and would feel completely
| ripped of if i had paid the current prices.
| nsteel wrote:
| > And my Pi4 collects dust behind the TV
|
| Put it on ebay. Right now.
| LordHeini wrote:
| Yeah it is one of those cases of 'someday i will use it for
| something else'.
|
| Maybe a Pi-Hole and or file server.
|
| Too sad that its performance is just quite not there for 4k
| video (on the other hand it is amazing that it works at all
| for such a small device).
| pocketarc wrote:
| Not the parent, but seeing this CTA, I might - I have one
| that's been sitting unused for a long while, even bought the
| nice case and all. Thought I'd use it but nah.
| technofiend wrote:
| >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.
| piersj225 wrote:
| For anyone in or around London, for today and tomorrow there is a
| popup shop on Oxford street selling raspberry pis
|
| https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/the-raspberry-pi-store-pops...
| Ptchd wrote:
| They actually have some in stock?
| soapdog wrote:
| They had the 2GB and 4GB in stock when I arrived a couple
| hours ago. They said they'll have the 8GB tomorrow.
| nsteel wrote:
| Yes. At least, they did at the other recent popups.
|
| > Raspberry Pi 4 (2GB, 4GB, and 8GB) will be in stock at the
| pop-up. Please be aware that we're limiting Raspberry Pi 4 to
| one of these computers per person. Note that the limit is one
| of any, not one of each, so you won't be able to purchase one
| 2GB model and one 8GB model -- you can only buy one of any of
| these computers. We've decided to do this to try to ensure
| that everyone who has made the trip to Oxford Street can pick
| up one of these harder-to-come-by boards.
|
| EDIT: They are sold out of 8GB Pi4 and Pi 400.
|
| https://twitter.com/Raspberry_Pi/status/1585960073549217792
| eliasmacpherson wrote:
| 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=...
| StillBored wrote:
| Stability issues on RPI's almost always are the result of power
| and cooling problems.
|
| AKA, use one of the official power adapters, and one of the
| large 3rd party heatsink/fan combos.
|
| Web browsing on the rpi is painful at best, and when its
| "working" will be stressing the poor thing to its max, so...
| see above.
| eliasmacpherson wrote:
| it stands up to stress/linpack, I've the flirc case & and
| official adapter. It may be something to do with trying to
| accelerate video. Otherwise it has never crashed.
|
| I suspect it's a compilation flag that this ubuntu distro has
| set correctly that RpiOS has not, I also see some
| about:config messing to try for another time.
| rambambram wrote:
| Ubuntu Mate 20.04 is my secret sauce, I guess. I also found
| Raspbian (or RPi OS as it is now called) to not always perform
| properly with Youtube.
| satysin wrote:
| 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.
| password4321 wrote:
| 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.
| rambambram wrote:
| 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.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| 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.
| naikrovek wrote:
| about their previous computers:
|
| > After a while it felt as if a fighter jet was taking off next
| to me, constantly.
|
| as someone who spent time around jets in the US Air Force, I
| absolutely loathe this analogy.
|
| The difference between a few computer fans and a jet taking off
| is like the difference in force between a dead leaf falling on
| you from 10m above you versus a 25kg anvil falling on you from
| 10m above you.
|
| computer fans are annoying, sure. being 6ft away from a jet
| engine during takeoff will result in permanent and severe damage
| to your hearing, if not complete loss of hearing.
| rambambram wrote:
| It was only about my own computer, no other people in this
| story. ;)
|
| Since we are still talking about fighter jets, they should make
| the F-35 less noisy. The Netherlands have a bunch of them and
| the F-16 is as quiet as my RPi compared to them. Or does this
| analogy also rub you the wrong way?
| jenscow wrote:
| I'm sure they've been told a million times not to exaggerate.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Figures of speech are forbidden now?
| naikrovek wrote:
| 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.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| That was a figure of speech.
| naikrovek wrote:
| you can't just call everything a figure of speech and use
| that as license to say what you want. words have meaning.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > you can't just call everything a figure of speech
|
| When you say "everything", do you mean literally
| everything, or was that a figure of speech?
| denysvitali wrote:
| The Macbook Pro 2019 gets close to that though :D
| wccrawford wrote:
| The world is inundated with these over-the-top analogies now.
| People can't exaggerate just a little, they have to go full
| nuclear. And when dealing with a lot of sensitive subjects, it
| negatively affects a lot of people. I'm looking forward to a
| generation that swings the other way and goes super-literal on
| everything.
| ejb999 wrote:
| ..that and 'it looks like a war zone' analogy after every
| storm.
|
| Unless you have actually been in an active war zone, you
| probably shouldn't use that particular analogy either.
| drivers99 wrote:
| Aren't "inundated" and "full nuclear" exaggerations too?
| lelanthran wrote:
| Maybe it was an attempt at humour?
|
| Like, "If I've told you once, I've told you a million times
| - _don 't exaggerate!_"
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I worked with a guy who was an F-4 technician and can
| appreciate that perspective.
|
| But from the perspective of a civilian, we only hear fighter
| jets when indoors or on the ground. The noise a fighter jet
| makes is nothing like a commercial airliner. But it is on par
| in terms of annoyances with the sound a laptop makes when it is
| maxed out thermally, if you're sitting in your house.
|
| I know it isn't a "fighter jet" but recently the USAF passed a
| U2 basically right over my house. I was shocked to realize just
| how loud that plane is for example.
|
| So the analogy makes sense. About the only other thing that is
| similar in annoyance is wood chippers.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| 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.
| pmontra wrote:
| I bought a couple of Odroid HC4. I boot from a microSD. I can
| plug my old SATA disks in there. The board with an old 750 HDD
| consumes 12 to 15 W. If I unmount the HDD file system and
| switch off the disk with udisksctl power-off it's only 4 W. Any
| operation on the device turns the disk on again. I'll check
| with a spare SSD.
|
| Even if I had a different use case Pis are impossible to find
| at a price worth paying for. I'm starting to forget about them.
| [deleted]
| rwaksmunski wrote:
| Yeah I bought a used Lenovo M720q NUC style 6 core i5-8400T
| 16Gb Ram 512Gb NVMe machine for less than a new Pi 4 8Gb. With
| a windows 10 pro license. Makes one hell of a home server.
| mro_name wrote:
| at de.farnell.com it costs EUR 85 - but has over 1 year
| delivery time :-(
| nextos wrote:
| I use an old NUC with a i5-4250U CPU on an Akasa fanless case
| and it's pretty great.
|
| One of the tricks is to run a very thin and simple stack to get
| really low latency. No compositor, no DE, just a WM and X. And
| Ethernet.
|
| It copes with Google Meet or MS Teams just fine, as well as any
| light development. I do all heavy lifting by SSHing to a huge
| workstation.
|
| There are lots of nice options if one wants to purchase a brand
| new fanless desktop: Cirrus7, Tranquil, CompuLab, etc. And of
| course, fancy DIY with e.g. a Streacom case.
| anthk wrote:
| In my case I use a NUC but with Gnome with Wayland , NixOS
| and a Xanmod kernel (multimedia/rt/input optimized
| throughput) with some blobs purged. No desktop effects.
|
| On the netbook, OpenBSD with cwm+xterm+gnufont+tmux plus
| mpv,gv,mupdf,nsxiv and sometimes links -g and a forked dillo.
| On SSH, I don't care even if I use wireless: I use Mosh and
| the remote server it's handled either by Tmux or Screen.
|
| The latency on both are comparable.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| I bought a used nuc computer on eBay for less than $100
| recently. It's much more powerful than a pi. Used computers are
| some of the best bargains now.
| yrgulation wrote:
| 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.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| This! Its why I love using geizhals, you can select to show
| all sellers from not just your own country but all of EU,UK
| as well. And immediately filter for availability and
| shipping.
| tpxl wrote:
| Galagomarket seems to have the RPi 4B 8GB in stock for 99EUR.
| 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
| yrgulation wrote:
| Thanks for the link - i love this kind of small shops
| selling hobby electronics. I dont see an indication that
| they dont ship in all of the eu, at least according to
| their tocs. Seems like sending to outside slovenia costs 5
| eur, peanuts. What i do usually is i just email them
| beforehand to be sure - a good test of their responsiveness
| as well.
| nousermane wrote:
| Is it actually in stock at this price? Where I am, local
| price tracker, tweakers.net, also shows some listings for
| ~100 euro, but if you click through to the seller's website,
| it says there "not in stock, delivery date unknown". If you
| limit to what you can actually buy, it's ~200 euros, and even
| that - often with a week or two of lead-time.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I've noticed listings like that more and more lately. A
| dark pattern where you initially think something is in
| stock but is actually sold by a third party of a third
| party.
| [deleted]
| 12tvende wrote:
| Damn what IDE do you use? What games do you play?
| eddieroger wrote:
| Both of those are specialized use cases by most people's
| definitions. For most of the uses of normal people, "daily use"
| is a good web browser and maybe a mail client, and the Pi
| should be more than capable of running those. A Pi is hardly a
| gaming rig or a dev box, and I don't think anyone would claim
| it is.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| That said, Emacs and Vim run fine on a Pi. :)
| anthk wrote:
| I run nvi+tmux under an OpenBSD netbook for C/AWK and Perl
| (sometimes TCL). If flies. No SSD. On gaming, I prefer
| Nethack/Slashem, IF and retroemulation. Or not, with
| Scummmvm.
|
| I can always use the NUC at the living for games such as
| Jedi Academy or Jedi Outcast.
| akho wrote:
| Why not read the article before you get snarky?
|
| > programming (Pluma as my text editor and LAMP stack for
| running a localhost), and some simple games like Mahjong and
| Solitaire
|
| Tools from an era that matches the computer's capabilities.
| mmcallister wrote:
| (n)vim would work a real treat on a pi. Building locally might
| be tricky depending on the codebase, but it's not entirely
| unreasonable to expect to have a full fledged IDE on a pi
| (except Android development, lol)
| rambambram wrote:
| I just use the text editor that comes with Ubuntu Mate, it's
| called Pluma. I only play Mahjong and Solitaire on the thing.
| So nothing advanced compared to modern day capabilities. I only
| ask things from my RPi that I know it can perform, so with my
| software needs I had to adapt to this piece of hardware as
| well. I'm just surprised it held so well for over a year now.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| hey HNers, this is sorta related to an idea I have, using a Pi
| plus an RF transceiver for reading RFID tags. Commercial ones
| with Bluetooth seem to run $1,000 or more.
|
| I'm helping out with a food distribution org (lfrad.org). One of
| their gleaners, Steve, would like an easy way to estimate the
| weight of the food they've collected from a supermarket. The idea
| we like is to attach an RFID tag to each _box_ of food (not each
| item), and segregate the types of food, e.g. a bread box, a
| produce box, a milk box. Steve already does the repacking, in
| boxes in his SUV. He knows the average weight of a box of each
| type of food.
|
| The tags will just say what kind of food it is. They can be
| reused once they're counted.
|
| Note that the boxes don't come pre-packed from the store, and he
| doesn't lay them all out on the ground before putting them in his
| car.
|
| SO: the goal is, he just points his homebrew RFID reader at the
| car full of boxes, and it counts the boxes of each type of food.
|
| Has anyone ever done anything like this?
|
| He's a former circuit designer, so hardware hacking is not beyond
| him. I also have other friends who could help. I think a funky-
| looking homebrew product is actually _preferable_ to a commercial
| one, since who 's going to steal it?
|
| EDIT: thanks for the answers so far. I _think_ some commercial
| units do work with passive tags at that distance (say, 5 meters),
| but I 'll have to recheck.
|
| The trunk can be open; that's not a problem.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Your current design employs passive tags. Those rfid tags are
| lit up by the scanner, and thus must be in very close
| proximity. There's nothing (that i know of) that will report
| its data passively over that distance.
|
| Alternatives could be Bluetooth beacons or something bespoke,
| but that will require powering the tags... increasing cost and
| complexity of operation.
|
| Edit: you can use computer vision approaches (like qr codes) if
| you have line of sight to each box. But that's not guaranteed
| if I interpret your problem correctly)
|
| Edit 2: if you do use RFID but position the reader near the
| trunk opening and scan each box as it enters the trunk, you can
| keep a running total of the weight added to the car. That might
| strike the best cost/effort/result balance given these
| constraints...
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| NFC and RFID doesn't work at that kind of range, i.e. standing
| multiple feet away. It definitely won't work through a metal
| car trunk too.
| ch_123 wrote:
| That NextCube-esque case is nice, might get one for myself :)
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| 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.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| The Pi4 should cost $30. The entire point is it is cheap. But
| now with product scalpers jacking up prices, its just an bad
| purchase.
| rambambram wrote:
| 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.
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| That's a good reason, it's always great when you can
| repurpose hardware.
|
| It is a Beelink model from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. It
| came pre-assembled with Windows 11 pre-installed. I wiped it
| and installed Proxmox.
| rambambram wrote:
| 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?
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| 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.
| rambambram wrote:
| Good to know, thanks!
| focusedone wrote:
| 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. Crazy slow for a windows desktop but perfectly snappy
| running debian.
|
| For someone just looking for an inexpensive PC, and with the
| way availability and markup are right now, the Pi just doesn't
| make sense. Used / cheap SFFs are a good way to go.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > 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.
| nmz wrote:
| You don't need to buy a case.
|
| Also, the plan was $100 for the pi4+keyboard+everything combo
| before all this (lets just call it the 2020 era) happened. But
| $100 is still a much better deal than $180.
| jstarfish wrote:
| Tangential, but I learned the other day that if you have
| access to a 3D printer, there are a lot of free designs for
| RPi cases on the STL-sharing sites.
|
| Some of them add extra value by doubling as other desktop
| furniture (phone stands, pen holders, etc.).
| rambambram wrote:
| This was exactly my case. I spent around that price point,
| before 'the 2020 era'. The RPi4 definitely needs cooling.
| Luckily for me the passive cooling case/ribs works, so I
| don't need fans.
| easygenes wrote:
| 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.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Productivity doesn't scale with speed, or else everyone
| would be using Threadrippers. OP might be perfectly fine
| with a pi.
| StillBored wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| The first machine I browsed the web on was running at a
| wopping 40MHz. We have a bloat problem not a spec problem
| even on cheap machines.
|
| Now get off my lawn you kids.
| bee_rider wrote:
| We have an absolutely terrible bloat problem on the web.
| Unfortunately, using a slow PC on our end won't solve it.
| If we could force web devs to work on raspberry pis or
| old atom netbooks, the world would be a better place.
| rambambram wrote:
| That's what I did, basically. I forced myself to work on
| low end machines because there might be a chance my
| website system also runs in a browser on a low end
| machine. My website with this blogpost is holding up
| perfectly fine by the way, even with all HN visitors,
| peaking at almost 2 visits each second for some hours.
| Also credits to my webhost!
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is funny to think of the hoops I jumped through to get
| things working nicely on an old Atom processor. My
| Makefiles were so good, everything was tracked
| compilation only happened when necessary...
| easygenes wrote:
| 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.
| eliasmacpherson wrote:
| it will throttle under load if you don't buy a case
|
| https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2019/best-way-keep-your-
| co...
| StillBored wrote:
| Not if its 1/4th the machine.
|
| These jasper lake/etc machines are usually between $100 and
| $200 new and are a much better deal than an 8G rpi, even at
| MSRP for a laundry list of reasons starting with they are
| much more capable machines.
|
| Look for chuwi herobox, beelink, etc
|
| The pi's were priced right when they were $35, because adding
| storage, case, RTC hat, powersupply, etc would double or
| triple the machine build cost but still land <$100 when the
| floor on cheap PC's (usually Via) were in the $300 range. But
| driving the price up for just a tiny amount of ram...?
|
| These days you can buy new windows tablets for $200 (from big
| companies like HP for example), and these low end NUC style
| boxes frequently for less than $100. Sure the perf isn't
| great, but even the worst are equal or better than the very
| aged A72, low clocked designs lacking even crypto
| acceleration you find in the rpi4.
|
| Never mind if your actually trying to just save money,
| midrange refurb and used machines from a couple years back
| will give you perf within a few percent of the current
| hardware in the same price range, and its going to be far
| more capable.
|
| (I just stumbled on a very capable i5 based HP slim fanless
| desktop, refurb for $109 on amazon while checking the prices
| of that chuwi. There are a bunch of these "laptop in a slim
| desktop" case systems frequently for very reasonable prices.)
| [deleted]
| blueflow wrote:
| I used a RPi in the past as main desktop, why i went for this:
|
| - Its not a Intel platform (trust issues due to IME)
|
| - Power consumption low enough for running 24/7
|
| - Noise - its quiet enough so it does not disturb me while
| sleeping
|
| - No support for weird power management, machines going dark
| for no discernible reason has always been bugging me
|
| What i really disliked was the instability of SD cards, and the
| media playback was mediocre back then due to a lack of HW
| accelerators.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| > Its not a Intel platform (trust issues due to IME)
|
| You're right to be paranoid. If only people fully grasped
| what the IME actually was.
| StillBored wrote:
| Its not a Intel platform (trust issues due to IME)
|
| See, this is what I don't understand, the pi's GPU is running
| a huge pile of closed source proprietary code as well, and at
| a first approximation has full system visibility too
| (ignoring it apparently has a bug limiting its actual view of
| all system ram on the higher capacity models). It could in
| theory be injecting/monitoring the nic as well. AKA, its just
| as privileged as the ME.
|
| So why do you "trust" it more than the intel? If anything the
| intel probably has 100x as many security researchers
| analyzing it.
|
| Also RE power, the pi idle power tends to be quite poor. Mine
| idles at ~4W, which is worse than a number of low end intel
| machines I have, so for something that might sit idle for
| >12H a day, it might be less efficient than recent intel
| machines.
| blueflow wrote:
| > It could in theory be injecting/monitoring the nic as
| well.
|
| Intel is known to do this shit, Broadcom isn't, yet.
|
| I'd always prefer a blob on the boot partition over an
| EEPROM that i can't access without disassembly.
| StillBored wrote:
| When the machine owner asks for it, has there been a case
| where its been caught sending packets otherwise?
|
| I mean its a "feature" being sold, if you get a vpro/amt
| machine it still needs to be turned on (the couple I
| have, have bios options for enabling/disabling the
| management features).
| Sirened wrote:
| >ignoring it apparently has a bug limiting its actual view
| of all system ram on the higher capacity models
|
| AFAIK that SoC had big and little DMA engines. The little
| engines can't reach the upper half of memory but the bigger
| ones can, which means you can just use the big DMA engines
| to muck with any RAM you yourself can't directly see. It's
| annoying for practical purposes but it doesn't have any
| security value.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Pi 400 is about $70, or with power supply and mouse and a few
| other goodies it is $100. It is essentially a 4gb pi 4 built
| into a keyboard. The power supply is a basic 15 watt usb-c
| cube, so you probably have one around already. 400's are fairly
| easy to buy, unlike 4's. It would be nice if they made an 8gb
| one. I wonder if DIY upgrade is possible.
| fragmede wrote:
| good to know! I'll probably be buying a bunch and tearing
| then apart to use since the pi 4 is so hard to find.
| musicale wrote:
| The 400 motherboard is laptop like/long and narrow vs. the
| credit-card style Pi4.
| culopatin wrote:
| Does it run on low voltage dc?
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| Yes, it runs on 12VDC.
| mattkrause wrote:
| 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.
| haradion wrote:
| A little microcontroller with USB support (I like the
| Raspberry Pi Pico) can help with your GPIO woes.
| ozim wrote:
| I bet it is a bit more hassle than RPi.
| haradion wrote:
| Sure, in many cases. Depending on the situation, though,
| it may be no more hassle than any other USB GPIO device,
| so it's a decent enough cheap solution if you can't or
| don't want to use a Pi or a similar SBC.
| chasd00 wrote:
| with circuit python (basically Micropython) from adafruit
| you can open a screen session to the USB port and get a
| REPL interface. I wonder if you could set something up to
| script input and output from REPL (i'm not a python
| expert). If you could then you'd have a little pipe to the
| micro-controller where you could enter python and have it
| execute and return a value. From there you have all the
| GPIO and other features available on the microcontroller
| available to you on your computer.
|
| I have one of adadruit's RP2040 boards and use the REPL a
| lot to talk to other things connected to the i2c bus. For
| example, controlling servos from a servo board, or getting
| orientation data from an IMU. Basically, i treat the
| circuit python REPL like a command line
|
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/4884
| StillBored wrote:
| 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.
| chasd00 wrote:
| On my pi zero w, for realtime needs like pwm I use a
| dedicated controller and access it over the i2c bus. It
| works just fine.
|
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/815
|
| I got my pi zero w a lonnng time ago when you could
| actually find them.
| easygenes wrote:
| The LattePanda 3 Delta [1] has a Celeron N5105 and RasPi
| levels of GPIO pins. 1:
| https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2594.html
| mattkrause wrote:
| But it's $200 more...(but it's also in stock).
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| The Odroid H3 / H3+ is a x86 SBC that has a 24-pin GPIO
| header and is only moderately more expensive.
| pizza234 wrote:
| > 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 $180, all in
|
| That's an unusually low price, assuming it's new. Can you give
| a reference of the shop where you purchased it?
|
| For example, the first price I've found of a Gigabyte Brix (a
| relatively common mini PC) with an N2807 + 8 GB RAM + 512 GB
| SSD + no wifi, is 210+ USD.
|
| One of the cheapest x86 systems that I'm aware of, is the
| Odroid H3 (+), which still costs 129$ without RAM/disk/Wifi.
|
| This is definitely a machine I'd suggest as ARM SBC competitor,
| but I'm not sure that the price is representative of mini x86
| systems (when I was looking for one, a few years ago, it was
| the cheapest by a significant amount).
| easygenes wrote:
| He probably got something like a MeLE Quieter3 on sale or
| used. They're usually closer to $300 with specs like that.
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| It is a Beelink model from Amazon a couple of weeks ago.
| rr888 wrote:
| Presumably this one, is a good deal.
| https://www.amazon.com/Processor-Beelink-Computer-Support-
| Di...
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| Yup! Currently $190 with the coupon.
|
| Amazon seems to have multiple listing for Beelink PCs
| with the exact same specifications, but different price
| points.
| layer8 wrote:
| Now $219 with coupon.
| rr888 wrote:
| Interesting, I still see $249 with click the box for $60
| off.
| xbfjvusb6 wrote:
| Search the CPU name on AliExpress.
| pacifika wrote:
| The pi 400 was PS80 (unit only) recently
| outworlder wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Given the current availability and prices, yes. Mind you, they
| started much, much cheaper.
| sbarre wrote:
| I'd love to know where you got that PC for that price.
|
| I just spent 20 minutes doing some searches in all the usual
| suspects (Amazon, eBay, AliXpress, and some online stores I can
| usually get good prices from) and the cheapest I found for the
| configuration you specified was around $400..
|
| Mostly it seems to be the RAM that boosts the cost. For 8GB I
| can get it down to $260, but I've seen nothing even close to
| $180.
|
| Edit: I see elsewhere in the thread it's a Beelink from Amazon.
| Around ~$237 is still the cheapest I can find..
|
| Still a good price.
| veqq wrote:
| Apply the coupon and it's 190:
| https://www.amazon.com/Processor-Beelink-Computer-Support-
| Di...
| sbarre wrote:
| It shows as $279 for me with a $60 coupon.. Just being
| pedantic though, that's still a great price.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| The prices went up recently, but another similar one is the
| Morefine M8S (on aliexpress). N5105, 16G ram, 512GB SSD, 3x
| HDMI, 3x USB 3.0, 2x gigabit ethernet, Wi-Fi6, BT5.2, USB-C
| charging, ~$253.
| hello_moto wrote:
| What's the use-case for this PC by the way?
|
| I'm in the market for a cheap PC/Laptop for my kids
| (minecraft, zoom, MS teams, chrome, and Roblox)
| BackBlast wrote:
| N5105 Jasper Lake systems do this pretty well. Has a good
| iGPU, particularly for a low end budget intel chip.
| Efficient. Has Quick Sync for video.
|
| The laptops use the N6000 chip, N5105 is for the small
| desktop lines. There is also a more expensive N6005 for
| desktop.
|
| N6000 is more aggressive in power savings. So higher
| single thread, lower multi. It also has more silicon
| dedicated to the GPU, which is about a 25% boost (30
| execution units vs 24).
|
| The biggest practical difference I've seen is that 95% of
| the laptops have fixed memory that tops out at 8GB. HP
| has one that accepts an SO-DIMM. If this is a reasonable
| level for the minecraft they do then you should be fine.
| I know with my kid's systems I had to go up to 12GB
| because of the mods they like.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| r/buildapcsales on Reddit is pretty good for catching these
| sorts of deals. You'd want to filter by the prebuilt, HTPC or
| Barebones tags.
| talkingtab wrote:
| 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 run on my remote
| systems and as long as "it just works" locally then I don't have
| to deal with many differences between the systems.
|
| 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.
|
| My biggest complaint is that firefox is a little slow on the
| uptake, I am usually debugging some web interaction with
| developer tools and once the page is up it is as fast as I need.
|
| I don't play games, I don't edit videos (haven't tried) or other
| things.
|
| Key take-away: for development
| TMWNN wrote:
| >I have a special case, which is that I mostly ssh into my
| websites hosted by digital ocean.
|
| This sounds like what I do, except I mosh from a MacBook into a
| VM on my own server, which in turn runs tmux with mosh sessions
| to other machines, physical (including the same MacBook) and
| virtual. They are all local, but there is nothing preventing
| the sessions from being hosted somewhere else.
|
| >I usually have several terminal sessions (+3), some local
| terminal sessions and firefox
|
| Do you run Firefox remotely? I run Chrome and Firefox on the
| MacBook I use to mosh into the first aforementioned machine
| above. I read mail on one of the terminal sessions with VM on
| emacs; it passes via SSH URLs from messages to the local
| browser. Overall, I am very, very satisfied with my setup.
| mypastself wrote:
| Yeah, SSD is a must for any serious work on a Pi, although I
| still can't imagine running something like IntelliJ IDEA
| directly on it.
|
| With the recent release of browser-access VS Code, I feel like
| we're only a few years away from cloud development as dominant
| paradigm. We'll grouse about it here ("what happens when my
| network connection fails?") but I suspect using a "terminal" to
| develop on a remote machine is likely to be the only option for
| future generations of developers.
| mbreese wrote:
| Coding in an ephemeral development environment is actually
| kinda nice. Whether that is a fully remote system or inside a
| Docker container. It's nice to have a fully specified
| development environment that can be recreated at any time.
| I've started doing this for some newer projects and it's
| refreshing. You don't need to install compilers or libraries
| on your live system -- it's all stored in the container.
|
| This is what I see as the winning paradigm. Whether that
| environment is remote or local is almost an implementation
| detail, and should be unimportant to the developer at the
| keyboard.
|
| But the remote development aspect is even more important if
| you do notebook-style data analysis (which is increasingly
| more like traditional programming). In this case,
| browser/HTML based notebooks have been a game changer in that
| you can have long running sessions on heavy duty servers,
| controlled from smaller local machines. And the local machine
| only has to have a web browser.
|
| Incidentally, my first foray into this development model was
| when I was trying to use my iPad as a dev machine. I hooked
| up an RPi to the iPad over USB-C and connected to the RPi
| running code-server (before vscode had their own remote
| server option). It worked surprisingly well, but the biggest
| hinderance was storage. And if you're already connecting over
| a web browser, no need to limit yourself to a locally
| attached RPi...
| indigodaddy wrote:
| This is interesting. I wonder if one could use PINN or NOOBS on
| a portable USB SSD drive as well in order to multiboot the
| needful on one bigly ssd..(?)
| rambambram wrote:
| > 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.
| happyhardcore wrote:
| I started out using a cheap MicroSD and it only lasted a week
| or two before failing; I've since replaced it with a 128 GB
| SATA SSD with a USB3-SATA dongle I bought off Amazon. No SD
| card needed and it's served me incredibly well. I figured
| that even the best MicroSD card isn't going to be designed to
| run as a computer's boot drive, and SATA SSDs are cheap and
| plentiful.
| rambambram wrote:
| I should definitely look into this, thanks!
| justin66 wrote:
| 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.
| rambambram wrote:
| Thanks for the tip!
| bitwize wrote:
| I figure I could totally main a Raspberry Pi in a pinch. With
| Emacs and some programming tools, what more do you need? I'd have
| to budget browser tabs and I'm not going to edit 4K video or run
| some corpo enterprise microservice architecture on the thing, but
| it's still more than enough computer for many basic tasks and
| fairly significant programming.
| lygten wrote:
| Ive used a RPi4 4GB as my only computer for well over a year,
| without any issues. I use my VPS via SSH for any heavy coding
| tasks. Libre Office, Claws email suit my everyday needs. I'd also
| like to my get my hands on the 8GB Pi4 version. In theses times
| of expensive electricity bills, I can have the pi running all
| day.
| rambambram wrote:
| I always wondered how the 4GB version would perform for my use
| case! What OS do you run?
| culopatin wrote:
| If someone knows of a replacement that would work in a car that's
| not $200 please let me know. Needs to run on 11-15v dc and not
| have a fan so I don't destroy it when I hit a pothole. Needs to
| boot Linux and run a Java app.
| josefresco wrote:
| 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.
| anaganisk wrote:
| canakit for 2GB and 8GB version seems to be always in stock if
| you are okay with buying the extreme kit.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I set up an RSS-to-Telegram bot on fly.io connected to this
| feed https://rpilocator.com/ and it helped my buddies get a
| bunch.
| josefresco wrote:
| Thanks I tried that site for a few weeks but was never able
| to order in time. I guess I need further automation like you.
| rambambram wrote:
| True. I was lucky enough to already have one. I recently tried
| to find another one here in The Netherlands. Usually they're
| out of stock but can be backordered.
| [deleted]
| jacob019 wrote:
| 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.
| SyneRyder wrote:
| Would you consider a Pi 400, the model with the C64-like
| keyboard? They still seem to be available, and seem ideal for
| the daily computer use-case. Though I guess the difference
| between 4GB & 8GB RAM is significant.
| josefresco wrote:
| I'll consider it (for myself), but I'd rather have just the
| board as I was looking to gift two to my nephews.
|
| Someone else pointed me to CanaKit which does have kits for
| sale (and in stock) that include the individual components:
|
| https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-4-extreme-aluminum-
| case...
| 404mm wrote:
| If it works for you than that's all what matters. If you want a
| quiet computer without the HW configuration constrains of single
| board with no slots, I recommend older HP EliteDesk G2 (or newer)
| 35W SFF. You can get them for about the same price as RPi 4/8GB
| and they have the option of M.2 SSD and ram expansion. The fan is
| down to minimal RPM (imo not even audible) and it stays cool. I
| have been using these for my home servers for years. Just like
| you, I cannot stand the noise of fans and these are sitting
| directly behind me and are completely quiet. Even with the
| slowest cpu options (i3), the performance is in multiples of Pi)
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Confirmed I bought 2 HP EliteDesk G2 within the last two years
| and they really are great for a non-gaming workstation or
| server. Both under $135. One was an I5-4590 and the other an
| I7-4770T (both 4th gen and generally capable CPUs), both with
| 16G ram and an SSD. One had no OS, however the onboard license
| allowed me to install Win 10 Pro without any issue. Obviously
| these are also great for throwing Linux onto.
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