@brennen

So, in your opinion, the Pi being unable to do modern web browsing, and running linux, is what keeps it from wider home adoption?

@ajroach42 i don't think it's any one thing, it's sort of overdetermined:

- supplychain problems
- modern web is super resource intensive
- no onboard wifi in models pre-3
- unexpected power loss usually kills filesystem (this may have been mitigated by now, held true for a long time)
- might not like your cheap sd card
- is literally just a circuitboard, doesn't look or feel like a consumer device

@ajroach42 and linux as such isn't the problem, but in practice it's a device that needs some support or users who're equipped to grapple with finding info by way of some other device, since when a pi is down hard you're not going to find info about the pi using the pi.

@brennen The power failure thing is a very good point that I don't often think about, but you're 100% right.

@ajroach42 it was definitely my number 1 complaint in terms of wasted time while i was actively developing stuff for the pi.

again, several of these things have probably improved some.

but i mostly think: good in a classroom / lab setting, good for home tinkering if users are already equipped otherwise. not much of a candidate for primary home device. (and i've _used_ it that way, and done some teaching with it in that setting, so hopefully this doesn't come off as overly harsh.)

@brennen I think it could be made in to a device that's good as a primary home device, but I agree that it isn't out of the box.

It's needs a case and peripherals and a read-only SD card, and somewhere else to save data.

Did you ever use Puppy Linux?

@ajroach42 i think i'd guess that there are _probably_ better starting points for that kind of effort by now, but yeah, you could get some ways towards a more robust home PC kind of thing by doing that stuff, though you drive costs enough higher at some point that i wonder if it's worth it as opposed to some intel NUC or something.

i haven't tried puppy - seems like a cool thing.

@brennen I used puppy from a flash drive extensively back around `08 or so.

Some of the techniques they used to make the SD card not flake out on power loss or accidental removal could be useful on the pi.

@brennen @ajroach42

I've had success using one in a good solid case running XMBC/Kodi connected to a projector for non tech staff at work to play films for the patients to watch (a random collection of outdoor scenes, old ciné films of England and cat videos 😸 ) and in spite of poor power quality (and it getting siwtched off by accident) not had the corrupt SD problem, so it could be a Raspbian issue (the movies are stored on USB sticks).

@vfrmedia @brennen @ajroach42 It isn't usually fast enough to decode anything in the (full) HD area or using advanced codecs though, which limits the value in a modern home entertainment setting

@elomatreb @brennen @ajroach42

I (just about) managed to get 1080p out of even an RPI 1 without too many glitches (this is not with Raspbian but whatever custom distro is on OpenELEC

TBH most of the content shown on this system is 720p or even 480p, bear in mind its not a full HD beamer and the viewers are older and don't have perfect eyesight either, but some will sit for hours and watch the entire Catwatch series (that reminds me, must try and download the German version too)

@vfrmedia @brennen @elomatreb I've never had a problem with 720p via Kodi on a pi 3.

I've never tried 1080, because I don't have a 1080 TV (so, even though I have 1080 and 4k files, I make a 720 or 480 copy for playback.)

@ajroach42 @brennen its good for experimental systems and kids/teens/young adults who are *already* into some form of tech, but slow for GUI use and not every family house (at least in UK) has "spare" display device with HDMI input (often this is a TV, and other family members want to watch telly on it!).

Its also *really* easy to corrupt the SD card by a hard shutdown (such as snagging the USB power cable) and you have to reformat and start again (which can be off putting)

@thomnottom There's lots of room for tinkering in home computing, but I guess I take your point.

@ajroach42 I don't disagree. Would love to see more of that. But overall it's a small subset.

Where it could make a real impact is IoT. Start replacing all those single use easily cracked devices.

@Algot Alright, these are good points.

Pi is not good for most modern streaming services. Pi is not good for modern web browsing. Pi is fine for email, but no better than anything else.

@ajroach42

I do hope you understood that I was being snide.

I have several single board computers in various stages of purpose. Some are just for exploration and learning.

I'm old, but never toooo old.

@Algot I got that, yeah.

But also, you made some good points.

@uranther @brennen I've used one, but I don't own one.

I found it to be pleasant, but too expensive compared to a traditional computer.

@abe That's a good point.

People don't have a need in their life for another device. All of the places that computers traditionally used to put themselves in the home have been filled by commodity hardware.

So one reason that we haven't seen more adoption of the Pi is that it is no cheaper than devices that are easier to use and do a better job at some of the tasks where it might be used.

People don't know what to do with it.

@derpayatz I'm pretty sure there is a tablet kit that can be put together for right around $200, but I'm not certain, because I haven't spent a lot of time looking at the kits, just the bits.

(Official screen/enclosure is ~$60)

And I agree, it can get expensive to outfit the thing, especially w/r/t the SD card and enclosure.

My local thrift stores stopped carrying desktops though, so I don't feel that last one as much.

I wish they did, I used to love be kitted up with thrifted PCs.

@ajroach42
Like if I need a small home server I already have a Core 2 duo micro at with 4gb of ram and a 500gb hd I got for $60 on ebay in 2010. It even has HDMI.

@derpayatz So your position is that traditional computers provide more utility and are available for roughly the same amount of money.

I can accept that. That's a good reason.

I'll look in to the used PC market some.

@ajroach42
Well put, thanks.

I was really excited about the RPi when it came out but I just don't have a need for it. I think in retrospect, the compact size is its biggest asset, not the price and certainly not the features; but for some reason the most popular, widely promoted, and best supported use for it seems to be in home servers, not portable computers.

@derpayatz

TBH, I preferred the CHIP to the Pi in everything I tried using each of them for (aside from needing an adapter for video output on the chip) because of the microSD card requirement of the pi.

If they'd slap a 4gb eMCC on the board, I'd be over the moon.

The pi is hard to use as a portable computer because the circuits for doing the battery correctly are tricky, and if you don't do the battery correctly, you can mess up your SD card when you have an inevitable hard shutdown.

@derpayatz That being said, I love the pi for headless applications in places where a traditional computer would be obtrusive.

When I was doing pen testing, I'd stick one in a project box and just plug it in somewhere. People left it alone.

When I was working on my mBBS, the pi was the obvious choice because I could mount the SD card read only and it would run for ~12 hours on a decent sized battery pack.

@ajroach42
There's your answer: none of those are home computing applications, at least not for the wider public.

@derpayatz That's fair.

@ajroach42
Incidentally, what's the CHIP?

@derpayatz https://getchip.com/pages/chip

It was a $9 single board computer that over promised, struggled with supply and cash flow problems, and seems to have disappeared.

Shame, because it was a decent little machine.

@derpayatz

What I want is a market of hobbyists and tinkerers.

And the Pi seems like, but apparently is not, the perfect fit for that.

@ajroach42
I'm a hobbyist and I think that (at least the impression) of the learning curve+cost factor was a bit too intense for me. It doesn't help that I'm a parent and perpetually broke

@derpayatz I've owned one of every pi released so far, and dozens of several of them.

If you've already got the bits, or you have a cheap source for the bits, and you have a thing that the Pi itself is good at, they can be really useful and neat (I made settop boxes and game consoles out of them at a time when there wasn't a cheap consumer version.)

But there is no clear application that screams "you need a pi" that I'm aware of at this time.

(I'll fix that, eventually.)

@ajroach42
That's what I'm talking about. I really really want a FOSS based tablet, but I didn't have the time and energy to figure out how to make that out of a Pi.

@coryw Marketing?

@ajroach42

Less marketing and more....
1) the Pi is not often packaged to be a good "product"
2) Pi and also off-lease PCs have a very DIY charcter to them, you sometimes have to get your own Windows install media. (esp. from, say, ebay, but sometimes from dfs/lenovo-outlet)
3) physical retail available to be buyable by people who don't already have network access somehow (esp. people buying mobile computers b/c they use wifi at libraries or school and don't have it at home)
4) not a laptop ^

@ajroach42

"Product" is a bad word choice for this, but ultimately, on its own, the Pi is a bare PCB to which you must add a case (if you want it), boot SD card, OS disk if you want a separate one, display/keyboard/mouse, and then go download an OS.

Without some kind of bundling, it *can not* be someone's first/primary/only computer in its current state.

@ajroach42 Note that there's plenty of reasons why /you/ or I would buy the Pi over that.

But, if we're talking about an impact on home computing, we're talking about normal people. Why would a normal person buy a Pi over that?

@bhtooefr

You're right. There's nothing the pi can do that something else wouldn't do better for someone who doesn't already have a pi.

@bhtooefr @ajroach42 to add (what me and bhtooefr talked about in IRC) is that the pi ended up being a hobbyist embedded device, the kind you use as a heavier MCU capable of running Linux with all that entails, or as a a component of a readymade to play emulated games/media on; instead of an edu/desktop device.

what you probably wanted? OLPC, but if it were good

@calvin @ajroach42 Honestly, I wonder if something like that could still be done. A $100 hackable laptop, with a standardized motherboard form factor, and some sort of tinkering expansion bus.

However, frankly, with parents buying iPads for their kids, this ship has probably sailed...

@bhtooefr @calvin If the pitop was $100 instead of $275, I'd be all over it.

@bhtooefr @ajroach42 @calvin

Novena? https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena

You'd probably be extremely hard pressed to make something like this cost $100 though, and the Novena is still extremely rough around the edges on the "revolutionizing home computing" front. I don't hear it get talked about a lot so I think it's a bit steep for the "hobbyist" crowd too, tbh.

@coryw @ajroach42 @bhtooefr I had pointed out yeas ago that they could remove FPGAs for a more affordable version, but IIRC they told me that the FPGAs were like, half the point of the device.....

@calvin @bhtooefr @ajroach42

Yeah, at that point it really is a fairly spendy hobbyist/developer tool - you could probably build a laptop type of case for the Pi and there is the.... pinebook.
https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=3707

@ajroach42 @bhtooefr @calvin

The pinebook, notably, still having many of the same problems the Pi does, in re performance and completeness and needing to have a technical background to even get one and prepare it for use. I could give it to a friend, but my friend might not be able to get it on their own, unless it shows up with ubuntu preinstalled at walmart.

@coryw @bhtooefr @calvin

So what I'm taking away from this is that there is an education issue, an economic issue, an ease of use issue, and a general utility issue.

That's a lot of problems to solve!

@ajroach42 @bhtooefr @calvin

I'd argue for "performance" as well.
You could probably count that under general utility, however.

Plus, in the ARM realm specifically, the big challenge for "everything that's not literally the raspberry pi" is that devices need to maintain a level of interest from people wiht technical skills to maintain an OS distribution for the hardware.

Who knows if the Pine64 systems will be able to do that.

That might count as "security" TBH, if noone builds OS patches

@bhtooefr That's a great point, and what looks like a good deal. I have a similar laptop from HP that I paid a little more for, it's good to know there's a generic one that's readily available.

@bhtooefr @ajroach42 even in the UK (where the PI is made so availability is rarely a problem other than immediately after new models are released) we can get a Windows tablet with attachable keyboard (touchscreen and double the RAM) for a similar price..

@vfrmedia @ajroach42 And actually, I'm gonna change my suggestion.

How about this?
http://www.microcenter.com/product/480829/EWT935DK_HD_Tablet_-_Black

Sure, the specs are atrocious, but it's a better device than a RPi, IMO.

@bhtooefr @ajroach42 it might struggle with just 1GB RAM. The ones sold in UK (was setting up one earlier this week as part of an embedded time recording system) has 2GB RAM, and looked like it could be usable for at least basic tasks (to the point I considered buying one for myself, as I could maybe hook it up to an RTL-SDR or my RF Explorer 3 for portable radio monitoring work)

@vfrmedia @ajroach42 Oh, it will struggle, but let's face it, so will a RPi asked to do desktop Linux duty.

@bhtooefr @vfrmedia $60 is pretty impressive for what it is.