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Author Topic: 2018 and Raspberry Pi  (Read 1577 times)
Group: Moderator
Hero Member
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Posts: 3537
It's turtles all the way down
A little late to the Linux world, I now do all my web activity and office stuff on a $30 Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. It is very fast, efficient and as well as Raspbian, you can also install OSMC or Kodi to stream media from thousands of sources.

Priorly I was running Ubuntu or Windows on various machines.

It plays all youtube videos seamlessly and without commercials, skipping right over them.

Power draw is a mere 2 Watts including the wall wart, no hard drive to wear out operating from a $6 16 gb SD flash card.

It sports an 1.2 gHz quad core 64 bit ARM processor

Built in wireless and bluetooth as well as net connector, 4 usb's, audio and HDMI output.

Raspbian, a Debian based OS does everything I  need including full LibreOffice suite. No ads to be found anywhere on the built in Chrome browser. A host of tools are also available as downloads on the Raspbian operating system. PDF viewer built in. Videos play beautifully and seamlessly in HD ported to an external monitor.

I even installed a schematic drawing program from the extensive library of free available programs, although I understand a free version of Eagle is available for Element 14 members (free membership).

Very easy to set up and run with NOOBS (new out of box software) which allows you to directly load your choice of OS and Media center to your device. You must first download NOOBS and copy it to your formatted flash card. Then NOOBS will prompt you for choices of OS's or media centeres to install

I purchased my first Pi 3 B unit last year, bought another this year (Microcenter) and am now experimenting with the new Pi Zero W (wireless) at $5 for an even more stripped down internet machine.

I have played with a host of other Linux based OS's on laptops and desk machines before as well as many Windows distros, but for my day to day web browsing needs this is a better overall solution. I still use the laptops and desktops for other dedicated work

I could go on and on about all the nice features but don't like typing.

Thus far my Pi experience has been extremely pleasurable. I recommend interested parties give it a try.

Regards
« Last Edit: 2018-01-15, 19:27:04 by ION »


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"Secrecy, secret societies and secret groups have always been repugnant to a free and open society"......John F Kennedy
   

Group: Tinkerer
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Posts: 3055
Great move Ion!  The Linux World is wonderfully liberating.

I've been playing with some inexpensive Android TV boxes which have
similar capabilities to your Raspberry Pi.  The new family of 64 bit
microprocessors and graphics processors is quite amazing.  As well
as unbelievably inexpensive thanks to China!


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For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.
   
Sr. Member
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Posts: 472
SD card will wear out after a year  O0
   
Group: Moderator
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Posts: 3537
It's turtles all the way down
SD card will wear out after a year  O0

Yes I'm aware of the SD card limitations so I use an external storage device occasionally for offloading files etc. I figure the electricity savings for not running the big desktop will buy plenty of SD. I believe the OS runs via the on board 1 gb RAM and is only uploaded from the SD, so the SD is only read and not being constantly written to, (but I could be wrong about that).
Then again you could create a ramdisk.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/extend-life-raspberry-pis-sd-card/

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/169/how-can-i-extend-the-life-of-my-sd-card

http://www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-extending-the-life-of-the-sd-card/



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"Secrecy, secret societies and secret groups have always been repugnant to a free and open society"......John F Kennedy
   
Group: Guest
But does it keep your room warm in the winter?

I can see the utility of an RPi as a headless email server or house security monitor or suchlike, but nothing quite beats a fullsize tower with 4 hard drives and a couple of optical drives, umpteen GB RAM, a TV card, a big graphics card and a 26 inch monitor.

 8)
   
Group: Moderator
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Posts: 3537
It's turtles all the way down
But does it keep your room warm in the winter?

I can see the utility of an RPi as a headless email server or house security monitor or suchlike, but nothing quite beats a fullsize tower with 4 hard drives and a couple of optical drives, umpteen GB RAM, a TV card, a big graphics card and a 26 inch monitor.

 8)

Yes, I have several big machines around the house, but for day to day web surfing, writing this stuff, reading and saving documents from the web, checking email, drawing electronic circuits, all the normal office tools plus more, I have found that I have not needed to fire up the big machines thus far. And it will drive as large a monitor as you can find with the HDMI connector. I'm currently driving a HP w1907 19" diagonal monitor, but have another on a 60 inch monitor/TV. I don't find any of the "stuckiness" as with the big machines running Windblows, although Ubuntu is better.

Another nice thing is everything works flawlessly without having to hunt for any missing drivers.

I have far less eyestrain using the 19" monitor over the 14" Acer laptop I was using for day to day stuff.

All of my disk hard drives are external and dormant until I need them so not spinning life away. I use thumb drives for small storage needs.

Power drain 19" monitor is 35 Watts, RPi 2 Watts.

To each tool a purpose.


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"Secrecy, secret societies and secret groups have always been repugnant to a free and open society"......John F Kennedy
   
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