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I don't see any reason to use a Raspi instead of an used thin client for selfhosting.
They use about the same energy, but the Mini-PC has x86, which has better software support, has more ports, and runs more stable.
I have a RPI for my 3D-printer (Octoprint), and I will soon replace it with a "proper" PC, because it always crashes.
Raspberry Pis are good for very small appliances, but for anything more, they suck imo
They are what you make of them. I have three 3b+ units sitting upstairs, one of which runs my entire media stack, and the second is mostly just for Pihole, and the last is for general tinkering I might need. The pin array is awesome to have.
No one's arguing they are low performance (although a 5 is practically 5x the performance of a 3b+ unit), but they definitely don't suck
I don't even mean performance in terms of computing power.
RPIs are, imo, not meant as a server. It might (and will) work fine, but one of the main problems I have is the power supply. As soon as I send a more advanced print job to my RPI, it crashes. Even though I have the official power cord.
If it works for you - fine! I don't want to tell badly about them. They are great.
It's just that they are very inflexible.
RPIs are, imo, not meant as a server.
That's not just your opinion, it's a fact.
Could also be your sd card btw.
Could be a bad board. I have a Pi 3B+ that is intermittently crashes and shows insufficient voltage no matter what power supply is used.
NGL, changing the computer instead of the power supply seems a bit expensive if that's the problem
At least your 3B+ doesn't cost $50.
I bought a couple a few years ago, the only one I still use is the PiHole, which has been phenomenal. I did try to use one as a media server but turned out to be more of a pain than it was worth.
I handle everything through docker, and a Portainer agent on top of that, so it's actually been quite painless. Would definitely recommend
We used a RPi 4 for a Plex server for a while. It was fine except it couldn't do any live transcoding or handle h265 worth beans.
I upgraded to an OrangePi 5. I'm on a sata drive for the OS and a external USB disk for media. The thing is amazing!
No, it's not a $50 computer. Yes, it works great.
I love RPi boards, but their hardware limitations are quick to be found as you move past simple hobbyist projects.
I agree, once you factor in a power supply (or PoE hat), case and storage a Raspberry Pi really isn't all that cheap anymore nowadays. Unless you have a project that specifically benefits from the GPIO pins or the form factor, just get a cheap barebones mini PC or a used one with RAM and SSD already included.
This will get you a system that's way more powerful even if it's a couple of years old (the Pi's SoC is fairly weak) and I/O throughput is no contest, normally with at least a dozen PCIe lanes to use for NVMe storage or 10 gigabit network cards, if you so desire.
I've actually been considering getting a mini-pc. My old setup at home used to be my main PC hooked up to my TVs in the living room with a wireless keyboard. Id do some low end gaming on it and mostly streaming. Im in process of selling that house and looking to go back into a more traditional setup, with my main PC In a den with actual monitors, but still want to consider the option of having a mini PC in the living room TV for the occasional PC needs, and running lower end party games from steam like Jack Box.
They're good for media centers, since the support 4k HDR. Can also use Moonlight to stream games from a PC. GPIO is useful, but I guess the PI is overpowered for most GPIO use cases at this point.
Which mini pc? I have an Intel NUC Intel i5 and looking for something smaller but can run a dev desktop (xfce, vscode, node, docker).
I use Intel NUC boards for desktop systems. The form factor is nice and compact. The only limiting factor would be the volume limits the GPU, but that's not a requirement for me.
What's a thin client?
A low-power computer typically used just to remotely connect to a proper server
Think of a browser and nothing else. Computation happens somewhere else (except JS)
A small form factor PC. Think of a Mac Mini. Small, often not-high-performance, low-powered PCs that are often used in business environments.
I use one as my home server.
That's not what a thin client, that's just a mini PC. A thin client is a computer that connects to remote sessions, and since that's their main function, they're they don't need more computing power than you need to connect to a report desktop environment.
Ah, okay. I thought OP was referring to a thinkpad/thinkcentre
that is not a thin-client in the traditional sense, just a small form factor (1liter) pc. Thin clients were minimal spec machines that were made to connect to a much more powerful server somewhere on the network that did all the work. The thin client handled the display and I/O.
Mini PCs are generally a far better deal than a Pi and much more powerful for any kind general computing use.
The Pi is do damn overpriced.
For 80$ I can get an 8th gen HP Mini with 16 GB of RAM + 256 GB M.2., case, power brick, all cables and have a much more stable and powerful system (second hand on eBay).
If you want an new SBC: Intel N100 for as low as $60 with 4GB DDR5 RAM.
The raspberry pi isn't a hobby/consumer product anymore. 2020 has shown that the Pi Foundation sees itself as an industry-first product. Also don't forget that they went public a few months ago so who knows what will come out of this step.
Let's face it: Intel driver support is great maybe even better than it is on a Raspberry Pi and proprietary is both hardware.
That's another good pick yeah. N350 stuff will also be interesting.
2020 has shown that the Pi Foundation sees itself as an industry-first product.
I think they never saw themselves as anything other than an industry-first product. The "hobbyist" market was just a way to develop, test and enter the mass market and gain critical mass in terms of FAB capacity and support / mind-share. IMHO their goal was always to go into the industry and disrupt some markets* but you can't just get there without the scale. They just played an entire generation of hobbyist making them addicted to their product to grow it and test it for them.
Now that they're public and partially owned by Broadcom it will just get worse.
The Pi Foundation kind of held the SBC market hostage to their ecosystem because software support is important and all the shinny Python libraries people are used to are typically only fully compatible, stable and tested with the Pi GPIO. With the RP2040 chip they make it so software/library compatibility is no longer a barrier to other CPU makers to enter the market - Intel or even Rockchip and Mediatek SBCs can include the RP2040 and gain instant software compatibility with any software library made for the Pi GPIO. Note that right now when RK releases an SBC it take a while for libraries to catch up with the GPIO definitions and whatnot.
I'm sure they aware of this risk, however, there's a much bigger market opportunity there - the SPI / i2C / GPIO bridge market typically held by FTDI. When you want to make low level hardware communicate with computers, usually on USB ports, you'll need some kind of hardware to handle the low level SPI / i2C / GPIO signals and convert them into something the CPU and the OS can understand, this is where FTDI has a big market share, even the Arduino uses a chip made by them for that.
The RP2040 can do this exact same task - it is what it does on the RPI 5 after all - and that’s a very big market. Almost every peripheral we connect to our computers is using one of those bridges to connect low level hardware such as microcontrollers to the computer or to simply toggle LEDs. Broadcom is now an investor of the Pi Foundation and they do a lot of hardware that does require those kinds of bridges… maybe they were the ones pushing the Pi guys into this direction because business wise it makes sense - they can test the reliability of those chips on the SBC market and once they’re sure they perform as good as FTDI ones they can use them everywhere for a fraction of the cost.
Let's see who gains more from the RP2040, the Pi guys obliterating FTDI or Intel and others taking chunks of the SBC market.
There's already a couple of examples of what I'm saying here:
Where can you find an N100 for $60 with 4GB of memory?
EDIT: Nvm, found the comment replying to this mentioning Radxa boards. Just found them the other day. Very interested.
Glad I looked at this thread. The fact they're cheap and have what sound like reliable PoE hats... Tempted to replace a few old Pis lol. Maybe. But can at least say no future devices will be Pis at this point.
Note: only using them for simple things. Wireguard VPN (no I don't have a fast internet so I don't need more than the 1gb connection speed), pi hole, and a touch panel I installed that connects to home assistant on the wall.
You mind dropping a link for that? I couldn’t find anything of Canadian equivalent in pricing and I’m interested
Okay, I just noticed that I might have mislead you, I forgot to include that I was talking about second hand hardware on eBay or something else. Lot's of companies are getting rid of those machines and they're selling around those price points. Try looking up "Hp mini i5 8th gen" or even 9th gen, sometimes older doesn't mean cheaper, it depends on how much people are trying to dump them.
Not enough RAM to be honest (at least not to be useful in the near future). I ran an Emby/Jellyfin server with 180 GB of music (nothing else was running, not even the UI), and it ran out of RAM, and was swapping like crazy at 1 GB of RAM on my Rpi3. In this day and age, you need 2 GB of RAM for servers, but that won't be enough within a couple of years (and that's why I don't suggest this new model with 2 GB of RAM). I personally would only get a new Raspberry Pi if it comes with 16 GB of RAM, so I can run a UI properly. You just can't ever have enough RAM these days. Linux is using less RAM than Win11, but not by much these days. It's growing too fast in requirements in the last 3-4 years.
It's growing too fast in requirements in the last 3-4 years.
I haven't noticed it tbh.
3 years ago XFCe needed on Debian about 450 MB of RAM (on a clean boot). It now needs 850. And that's not so much XFce's fault, it's all the other stuff underneath that have been growing too much too.
I mean, heck, Cosmic should not need more than 500 MB of RAM overall, having such a clean codebase. And yet it's the heaviest of them all, at 2.5 GB (even Gnome/KDE boots at 1.3 GB on Debian). And it's not a matter of optimization because it's an alpha. That's a cheap explanation. It's just heavy. Just as much as Windows in terms of ram usage.
I think it's the "unused RAM is wasted RAM" technology. Try on a machine with no more than 2 Gb.
Not sure what you have going but I have plasmashell running right now at 680MB.
you should try damnsmalllinux, it had a revival recently. though the absolute smallest modern one is probably Slitaz? or alpine linux
though you can definitely set up debian to use less than 500 ram today, kde/gnome are kinda hogs
A raspberry pi isn't and has never been a good choice for a server.
For an appliance like a pi hole, home assistant, or media center playing files from a real Nas it's fine.
Did. you not read what I wrote? I used it as a media center and it was swapping like hell. That's what Emby and Jellyfin are. Media servers.
No, you use it as a media server. A media center can also be a media server but often is not.
If your pi is just reading files from the network, it's fine. If it's serving files, you're gonna have a bad time.
Use the right tool for the job.
half the time i end up using some sort of esp product that costs 2-5 dollars per unit and buy them bulk from china and daisy chain them
way better than a pi
Raspi my dudes what the hell are you doing
It’s the plans to invest in Israel that bothers me at the moment. After all we’ve seen I just can’t put money into that. I’d rather not buy any tech that support that.
At that amount of ram, you'd be better buying a rpi 3 or a opi zero 3 one.
No thanks
There are so many issues with the RPI
Genuinely curious, can you enlighten me... I haven't kept up with rpi stuff... Since.. hm 3b I think. But my pinephone pro just crapped out...so I was looking for options.
Completely proprietary and overpriced.
Aren't most CPU's and chipsets proprietary? Not to mention all of the firmware blobs they require? What are some affordable, non-proprietary options?
Most devices will at least boot without proprietary software and a custom kernel. The RPI doesn't do that because Broadcom.
Is that $50 with the power adapter included?