Raspberry Pi hires a policeman. FOSS users angry. - Also a case study into why the main mastodon instances are shit.

[Aidan]

Seriously, what else is carrying the Pi along except accessories and software?

The Raspberry Pi foundation is getting so comfortable in their position they're letting various tinker kit manufacturers and software distributions fume an outclassed SBC along, even the Zero 2W is horribly outclassed by boards of the same form factor released a year or two back. Relying on woke talking points doesn't give anyone hope that the Pi 5 will make a difference, besides being what most people default to when they hear "single board computer". The fact we don't get any important hints as to what will come is disparaging and reeks of a downward spiral to obsolescence.

Khadas, Odroid, Radxa, and Rock64 all offer options that actually take advantage of their given SoC, offer more hardware expansion, and logical I/O you'd come to expect a NUC to have. If you want to use a tiny little board as your main computer for some reason, everyone else had done it better than the Pi.

I think name and documentation. If you look up SBC projects you will always come across Raspberry Pi projects that are usually really easy to do. Sure it may be just as easy to do on another SBC but people just getting their feet wet won't know that. Then this lends to the momentum as people stick with what they know, which is the Pi.

 

[Rozzy]

Is there a good alternative to the pi?

Mini PCs are about the size of a WiFi router, they generally use Intel CPUs and both the RAM and HDs can be upgraded. With Windows 11 not supporting processors older than 8th Gen Intel you can probably get a good used one on Ebay.

 

[Pee Cola]

Mini PCs are about the size of a WiFi router, they generally use Intel CPUs and both the RAM and HDs can be upgraded. With Windows 11 not supporting processors older than 8th Gen Intel you can probably get a good used one on Ebay.
View attachment 4049625

I'm partial to the Lenovo Tiny series. They start from around $40 for a 4th Gen i5, though prices vary depending on spec ($70 seems to be the going rate for an M93P i5-4570T with 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD and power supply)(A). Given that a barebones Pi4 4GB board is around $55 (if you can find one), it's a no-brainer.

 

[Toolbox]

People still support Raspberry? Even after 2014?

Are you saying they had a part in gamergate shenanigans, and if no, what? Regardless raspi doesn't seem to be the best option for microcomputers anymore especially since there seem to be tens of companies coming out with their own takes, several of them seemingly better than the pi in every way other than accessory compatibility and current software.

 

[AmpleApricots]

I said it before, but there's no point in even getting anything ARM. For like 99% of all use cases people use these computers for you can just get an low-end amd64 SoC. They'll run circles around most of the even high end ARM SBCs and actually, you know, be compatible to things. For the money accessories for the Pi are sold, you can get an older convertible or notebook that has actually WLAN/LTE worth a damn and a (touch)screen/keyboard built in. You usually even get an ~256 GB nvme/SSD drive that's also actually expandable, an SD-card slot and if you shop carefully you even get a nice amount of usb ports or even a thunderbolt port. Shop a bit longer and you'll get a usable thunderbolt dock with a ton of ports for ..lets say $15. This is all doable for 150-250 and it'll be a nice mobile unit in it's own case and everything with usually at least 8 gigs of RAM. With some stationary mini computer you can even go cheaper. What would you have to pay to get a Pi there? I just checked a reseller here in germany and the 8 gig Pi 4 is a hundred bucks. That's just the Pi, without anything. Not even a drive of some sort. It's not even usable like that.

You can e.g. get an older "Windows Tablet", people hated these things and maybe they're not good for tablet usage, but if you really think about it, it's basically just a small monitor (often with touchscreen even) with an x86 computer built-in. Suddenly sounds a lot more useful, doesn't it?

ARM would be attractive for the power consumption if the hardware support situation wouldn't be so arse. ARM SoC manufacturers don't give a shit, so it's all up to reverse engineering efforts with very mixed results, especially since even the SBC manufacturers basically just drop a board, say "My work here is finished. Look at these nice features the SoC theoretically* supports**. Consoom!" and leave it to random people and githubs to make it work. I wouldn't bother with ARM anymore. It's more likely that RISC-V will some day be in a usable state than some ARM manufacturer suddenly supporting their smartphone hardware for proper uses.

Currently all of Linux' hardware developers attention in that sphere is also targeted at making that Apple Silicon stuff work. I wouldn't hold my breath for that one either. x86 in Linux these days work so well because e.g. intel/AMD actually have paid people with the proper insights working on the kernel. (and yet it's still not as good as in windows) None of this hardware except some unique (and usually ancient, i.e. i.MX6) exceptions has that. Support will just never be that good. The hardware is just too complex. By the time the reverse engineering gets anywhere, it's outdated and attentions move elsewhere. It's a never-ending circle.

 

[The Mat Harris]

People still support Raspberry? Even after 2014?

There is a guy on /g/ that keeps posting about this device

 

[Miller]

Is there a good alternative to the pi?

Check the youtube channel Explaining Computers (dot com), he shows a lot of alternatives to the Raspberry Pi.

 

[Jump]

Is there a good alternative to the pi?

No. Because everything else is not a pi. There are lots of things that are almost like a pi except for X, Y, or Z. So you have to make custom case, HAT or worse of all deal with porting the software. And since Pi is based on the god awful Linux/systemd OS everything is a total fucking nightmare for novices.

The Pi is shit but everything is designed to work with it. If you just want a SBC to do a specific thing thats already been done a million times with pre-baked images and HAT's off Amazon Prime then there is only the Pi. Lately some projects have started supporting things like the OrangePi or BanannaPi but thats really only because you can't find the official Raspberry Pi's in stock for MSRP anywhere.

If the chinks would just make a 100% drop in replacement for the Pi 4 they would sell tons of them. But eveyone always has to do some twist or tweek that makes some sort of incompatibility.

 

[Pee Cola]

Looks like Raspberry Pi supplies should improve in 2023. (A)

Key points:
- around 100,000 units have just been released into the retail market in time for Christmas
- pre-pandemic production levels expected by Q2 2023
- allocation will gradually shift away from industrial to retail
- full retail and industrial allocations expected by end of Q3 2023
- Rpi Zero and Zero W prices up by $5 each ($10 and $15 respectively), but retail cap of one unit per order will be lifted

IMHO the convenience of being able to buy 2 or more Zero/Zero W at a time outweighs the extra cost.

 

[The Mat Harris]

honestly the biggest issue with rasp pi alternatives is needing to find someone that at least attempts to mainline their device.
Man ARM is such a shit platform no matter what people who like device trees tell you.

 

[Two Dollars]

I wish more companies cared about making cases for other SBCs. If you want to make a Batocera game system that actually looks like a console, your only non-RPi option is an Odroid XU4 with its N64-style case, and that thing’s about 7 years old.