Yep. The initial idea was to have a cheap SBC, that you could give to an entire classroom without being worried too much if some of them break. 35€ are not exactly cheap, but doable. 80-90€ is simply not viable for that purpose anymore.

At the same time, for more serious projects, it's lacking too many features like sata, pcie, etc., etc.

I feel like RPi is coasting on momentum, without a clear direction.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 49 points 10 months ago

The initial idea was to have a cheap SBC, that you could give to an entire classroom without being worried too much if some of them break.

[–] Norgur@kbin.social 7 points 10 months ago (3 children)

You know that RPi 5 actually does have PCIe, right?
And you know that RPI Zero 2W is as fast as an Raspberry pi 3, so plenty fast for the purpose you described, right?

And you know that the RPi 4 and 5 in particular are so fast that they can easily power your homelanb, 3d printer, smart home and NAS without breaking a sweat, right?

[–] DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz 25 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yet they're still inferior to even older x86 hardware. You can pick up a used NUC (or similar) for less than a pi 4 and it blows it out of the water on performance, while using only marginally more power.

[–] Norgur@kbin.social -4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Look, I don't know why there is so much Opposition to the pi,.since it's just one of many tools we have at our disposal to get stuff done the way we want it and I don't get why there has to be an objective best all around solution. If the Pi is what you are looking for: buy that, it's nice that it has the things it has, it's relatively low power and it's tiny. If you are looking for more, buy more.

Of course there is faster stuff that's older. For my setup, I want tiny and I want fast enough to host low-performance stuff like Home assistant, Baby buddy, an art stack, you get the jist. For this purpose a Pi that.goes into a literal drawer was exactly the thing I was looking for. It's basically used to replace the VPS I have for security sensitive stuff (Vaultwarden). So "marginally more power" is still wasted power for me. It sits in a tiny cabinet next to my router now, happily serving me the wheel of time audiobooks and telling me when my.kid has.last eaten.

[–] DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't know why there is so much Opposition to the pi

It's because they've become way too expensive for what they are. They made perfect sense and filled a gap when they were priced half of what they are now. They've completely lost the direction or purpose they once had, or intentionally changed it to be something else entirely. And it seems that just doesn't align well with many people.

[–] Norgur@kbin.social 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Thing is, the RPi 5 8gb costs 94€ after tax, so 75.in Us-before-tax-pricing. At least where I live, that's not a bad price for the package. Bedsides, the gap they filled is still addressed by the Zero 2W which is dead cheap for it's capabilities.

[–] DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

For almost 100€ I can just get much more capable hardware with only marginally larger footprint (both physical and power). Unless I needed the pin IO, the pi is a bad deal. And then if youre just beginning you also need a case, SD card and power supply and suddenly that pi is almost 150€ (and still running a shitty 16gb SD card), making it a horrible deal. I got my NUC, 16gb of ram and 1tb NVME for the same price (before upgrades with the default 8gb ram and 120gb nvme it was 65€), if you're planning on a miniature light weight home server setup, its just a no-brainer to not pick the pi.

And the zero doesn't have the ability to use any peripherals except for a display.

[–] Norgur@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Which nuc did you get for that money? Is that NUC actually faster than the Pi 5? I've seen a ton of people claiming this and then it actually wasn't. I mean, it that's what's on offer where you live, great! It's certainly harder to find where I am. Is an SD card that expensive where you are? I mean, a SanDisk Extreme blahblah 256gb is 25 bucks here. Case costs about 5 to 10 bucks. Power supply is Free. Most ppl have a USB power supply capable of running a pi at hand.

Why wouldn't the zero 2w have the ability to run peripherals? Of course it can. Besides: why would I want to run peripherals and a display on my pihole?

[–] JDubbleu@programming.dev 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not the person you're replying to, but I bought an Optiplex 5050 with an i7-7700 for $75 to use as a server because an RPi 5 is more expensive and way less powerful. It even has a CD drive.

[–] Norgur@kbin.social 0 points 10 months ago

Well, i'd ditch that one for it's power consumption (65w tdp is like a lot for a server) but that may not be an issue to you. Situations differ, needs differ. I had a quick look around at eBay and the like where I am and all I could get for that price was a crappy i3 4xxx or comparable, so you might see why the raspberry is a good offer to me.

That's why I'm against flat-out "yeah, the pi is not worth it" or "the pi is the bee's knees" statements. It's a tool among many and ought to be used as such and I dislike when there is this mob mentality pro or Contra anything. The pi has it's uses and there are.many cases where it's not the ideal option. I'll never recommend the pi or anything else flat out.

[–] aniki@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I bought a NUC with quad core intel atom 12th gen, 16gb of ram, and 512 NVME for about the same price. mine came with a power supply, case, cooling, and has regular ports so I don't need a fucking micro hdmi adapter.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I have to use some weird adapter cable to get some cards to somehow maybe work a bit, but still probably need some external power supply, because there's no way an RPi can deliver 75W.

Yes, it's doable, but in the sense that I could build a house with just a saw and a forest.

[–] Norgur@kbin.social 0 points 10 months ago

PCIe is mainly for SSDs, you don't need those things with that.