I know RAM prices aren't under control of the raspberry pi project, but something has gone dreadfully wrong in the economy when individual 8GB+ raspberry pi are now costing $200 to $300 for just the board before you add USB-C power supply, heatsinks, case, etc.
If a person doesn't need GPIO pins or other direct access to hardware [1], I don't understand why people are trying to use them with 1080p and 4K displays, keyboards and mice as general desktop linux computers. You can get a far more capable small form factor or ultra small form factor used Intel Core i5/i7 something corporate desktop with 16GB of RAM and a real SSD for like 150 bucks on eBay (USD). It'll be significantly faster.
Install barebones debian amd64, 'sudo apt install xfce4-desktop', it'll pull in all the xorg and other dependencies and also install a GUI login screen.
The one raspberry pi model which is still close to the original's $35 price is the raspberry pi model 4 1GB which is $49 in Canada. Accounting for inflation and difference between USD:CAD, that's about the same as 35 bucks. I think there are still a ton of uses for raspberry pi 3B+ or model 4 1GB particularly because you can power them off an 802.3af power over ethernet switch and cable, to stick one in a weird place with power and ethernet in one cable, with a basic $15 PoE splitter to USB-C power on the load end. [2]
I’ve always said that. If you want basic GPIO you can always shove a smaller MCU on the end of a USB cable and talk to that. Most of the embedded stuff I’ve done in the last decade has worked like that.
They are also terrible in education. Unreliable, huge set up time, no education software runs on them properly.
On the unreliable thing I got booted off their forums for writing a technical evaluation of the RPi 1 brown out issues with USB. That really put a bad taste in my mouth. Refuse to use any of their products since.
Raspberry Pi's are essential for a certain class of robots, they're small, light and mobile enough while still being computers, and they have all the pins you might need, most people who don't understand them are usually actually looking for a stationary mini pc or an mcu and are wondering why an RPi isn't those.
What kind of class you are talking, most of the time, we use MCU for real time stuff and a generic computer for Heavy computing stuff, they can communicate through whatever bus they want (Serial, USB or even wireless like bluetooth). E
It's more like for web people that wants to do embedded stuff and don't bother learning.
I've seen someone used the entire raspberry pi zero(dual core 1Ghz cpu with hundreds of MB ram) just to do some http request and display on a simple LCD, with python no less. All can be done with a simple esp32.
Broke off my Pi 4Bs USB C port when using it to test link speed for new LAN outlets, when I wanted to reorder I realized the 4 GB version is now 120 EUR… Damn.
The Pi makes no sense anymore at these prices. But I love that I got to experience them when they were affordable. I owned multiple 4bs at one point, and even have a 2b and 3b lying around. I have a clusterhat that I tried to setup again, but realized that the Pi0Ws have only 512mb RAM each and that's useless now.
If a person doesn't need GPIO pins or other direct access to hardware [1], I don't understand why people are trying to use them with 1080p and 4K displays, keyboards and mice as general desktop linux computers. You can get a far more capable small form factor or ultra small form factor used Intel Core i5/i7 something corporate desktop with 16GB of RAM and a real SSD for like 150 bucks on eBay (USD). It'll be significantly faster.
Install barebones debian amd64, 'sudo apt install xfce4-desktop', it'll pull in all the xorg and other dependencies and also install a GUI login screen.
20 seconds of searching turned up something that doesn't suck: https://www.ebay.com/itm/820084016851?_skw=dell+optiplex+16G...
The one raspberry pi model which is still close to the original's $35 price is the raspberry pi model 4 1GB which is $49 in Canada. Accounting for inflation and difference between USD:CAD, that's about the same as 35 bucks. I think there are still a ton of uses for raspberry pi 3B+ or model 4 1GB particularly because you can power them off an 802.3af power over ethernet switch and cable, to stick one in a weird place with power and ethernet in one cable, with a basic $15 PoE splitter to USB-C power on the load end. [2]
[1]: https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/rpi-gpio-pins
[2]: https://www.amazon.com/UCTRONICS-PoE-Splitter-USB-C-Complian...
They are also terrible in education. Unreliable, huge set up time, no education software runs on them properly.
On the unreliable thing I got booted off their forums for writing a technical evaluation of the RPi 1 brown out issues with USB. That really put a bad taste in my mouth. Refuse to use any of their products since.
I've seen someone used the entire raspberry pi zero(dual core 1Ghz cpu with hundreds of MB ram) just to do some http request and display on a simple LCD, with python no less. All can be done with a simple esp32.
But hey, as long as it works, right ?