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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

Raspberry Pi computers are hard to get, expensive and slow, now at least one maybe two generations behind competitors in terms of speed.

Upton claims that these companies had to use Raspberry Pi…. sounds false to me - lots of other companies changed their designs to handle the shortage.

If anything, Upton should have backed kids and schools above all - they are the one who really needed hobby computing during Covid lockdowns. Upton's justifications don’t ring true.

Also the company has treated hobbyists, kids and schools like garbage.

Buy something else.

View on HN

> Buy something else.

I have a raspi running pretty much non-stop since 2011 and am still able to update its software 12 years after purchase. All "somethings elses" which I bought had 3-4 years of software support and then their usability diminished drastically.

Why would the boards of this class need ongoing software support? Aren't you supposed to be able to run normal Linux on them, with few device-specific drivers (which don't need to change, since the hardware doesn't)?

Some had very customized kernels which stopped being released. Since getting all the custom drivers to work was too much pita for these devices' vendors, why would I pay them and invest my time in getting their hardware to work?

That these devices are useful for hobbyists, doesn't automatically mean that people want to periodically spend hours to have them working with up-to-date software.

> with few device-specific drivers (which don't need to change, since the hardware doesn't)?

The reason is that Linux has no stable in-kernel driver interface, so the drivers often have to change with new kernel release.

Feel free to complain on the LKML why you consider this to be a bad idea ...

> ongoing software support

Part of the problem here is that SoC drivers are hacked on top of the kernel (and are not merged in-tree). So SoC vendors have this pile of legacy and hacked-on code they need to cherry-pick every time the Kernel changes an interface they used (which is a lot) [0]. The code is also, let's be honest here, low quality and full of workarounds for implementation details (some radio-modem talking over I2C to transmit voice to the SoC???) so there's no way it would get merged into the kernel.

Of course, that costs and fortune and hampers the sales of newer chipsets so it’s not in the SoC vendor’s interest to do so.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_binary_interface

> Of course, that costs and fortune and hampers the sales of newer chipsets so it’s not in the SoC vendor’s interest to do so.

On the other hand, it would be in a lot of vendors' cost-saving interests to massively lobby for a (much more) stable in-kernel driver interface in the Linux kernel so that the vendors only rarely have to change their Linux drivers when a new kernel version gets released.

> sounds false to me - lots of other companies changed their designs to handle the shortage.

Sure, if;

- You don't run any other OS then Linux. For example Raspberry PI has pretty decent FreeBSD support. Other boards often don't support FreeBSD or not all hardware on the board has drivers.

- You don't have a custom case which relies on the design of the PI.

- You don't already have dozens or hundreds of PI's in the field and are not that enthusiastic to add a new board to the mix.

- You will probably also have to add a new board to the mix every 3 or 4 years or so since these other boards often have a lot shorter lifecycle.

- etc.

What are some good alternatives to raspberry pi for hobby use?

Edit: here's a recent Ask HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34976965

Odroid comes to mind

BananaPi, OrangePi, Odroid, NanoPi, Radxa would be some of the more well-known names. If you just need "something that runs Linux" pretty much everything qualifies, if you have more specific needs it comes down to comparing in detail... On the other hand, you can also find things serving needs that Pis don't cover so well (e.g. multiple Ethernet interfaces, SATA, ...)

> OP links the Banana Pi M5, VIM1s, Odroid C4, Rock 3A, and the Orange Pi 5 4GB as potential alternatives, but the hardware is not the problem, it's the software support and the community. I'm curious if you've found any SBCs out there that might be viable alternatives to the Raspberry Pi ecosystem.

From the linked Ask HN.

Hardware is irrelevant if the software isn't comparable. I'd like to be proven wrong but if nothing has changed in the last years there are no real alternatives to the Pi.

Depends on your use case.

Ex lease mini desktop Dell/Hp/Lenovo Intel machines off eBay can be good, and first class Linux support, and cheaper than raspberry pi.

Some applications can be replaced with a microcontroller like esp32 which has excellent software support.

Many of the machines above have pretty average Linux support but it seems to be improving, depends on your application.

If by "software support" you mean "people provide ready-made SD card images with project X already installed", then yes, no alternative to the Pi.

If you mean "gives me a standard linux distro I can install software on that can talk to the network and maybe show a UI on a screen", pretty much anything works (and a lot of things people do with Pis are just that - running things like network-wide adblockers, 3D printer servers, small python scripts for whatever).

If it's somewhere in between, it again depends. E.g. if I wanted a MIPI camera, I'd probably track down a RPi and use that unless I could find someone documenting a precise setup on something else.

If step 1 is to spend 30 hours researching the state of linux for each of the alternatives that makes them dead on arrival and a complete waste of time and money in my mind.

If it takes you 30 hours it is indeed a good deal to pay scalper-prices for an RPi instead.

Probably much quicker for most people, and then they end up having to debug it to death. And yes, that includes pretty much any alternative mentioned here.

What I mean is "is this thing either running mainline linux or supported well enough that I'll still be getting kernel updates in 5 years".

Is some of these a product that runs on mainline Linux? I feel like a device that only runs a kernel with weird vendor patches is going to be stuck on that kernel, which might be a problem for software support going forward. And will certainly be a problem from security point of view.

Pine64 aims to get their boards (and phones) working on mainline Linux. And their work applies to other boards using the same SoC, so for example the Rockchip RK3399 used in the Pinephone Pro and the Orange Pi 4 both run mainline.

The issue is mainline Linux support, most of these aren't supported by the vanilla Linux kernel.

> What are some good alternatives to raspberry pi for hobby use?

BeaglePlay, the newest version of the BeagleBoard:

> https://beagleboard.org/play

HN:

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35069786

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35076009

I still find that if I want a board that “just works” a Raspberry Pi is an easier option. Whilst the manual for the Broadcom SoC is incomplete the documentation and software support for other SoCs is even more variable.

I really hope the likes of the VisionFive SBC see decent adoption. Their reference manual seems good - but I haven’t really played around with the board all that much.

“Won’t you think of the poor corporations!”

That’s a new one for me. I would find it a lot less condescending to be told a straight “this made us the most money” reasoning. Anything else is obviously BS or incompetence.

Out of interest, which competitors are less expensive and/or less slow and/or less hard to get?

Pine64

I've had good luck with the Le Potato boards - https://libre.computer/products/aml-s905x-cc/

They're available on Amazon, 2GB board is currently $35. Same footprint as the Pi, fits most of the same cases, hats, etc. Decent support forums and community, and the images aren't too esoteric.

You're surprised what is basically the marketing arm of Broadcom treats hobbyists like crap?

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