At the end of May, the Raspberry Pi 4 announced its latest upgrade: a new 8GB memory version, priced at $75. Is this new Raspberry Pi really worth it?To answer this question, a YouTuber named Jeff Geerling came up with a bold idea: on a workday, unplug his MacBook Pro and plug in the newly purchased 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 as his main work computer to see what it feels like at the end of the day.
We know that a workday is not just about blogging or writing code remotely. If it were just that, any Chromebook, tablet, or cheap old laptop would suffice. Besides these, the workday content that Jeff Geerling referred to also includes:
Using dedicated apps to browse Twitter;
Using Slack (the memory used by Slack is more than all the other applications Jeff Geerling runs combined at any given time);
Recording and editing audio and video;
Using Docker, Ansible, and Kubernetes for some infrastructure automation.
He recorded the entire process and uploaded it to YouTube, where it has garnered over ten thousand views.At the end of the day, Jeff Geerling found that if your daily work involves a lot of command line work, programming, using git, and occasionally browsing the internet, Raspberry Pi OS is indeed a cost-effective choice. However, using it as a real work computer is still a bit painful, so he gave up on this idea after one day (he originally planned to stick with it for a few more days).He wrote a blog detailing the steps he took during the day, so let’s experience it together.Jeff Geerling: A Day Working with an 8GB Raspberry Pi Instead of a MacBook Pro
Step 1: Plugging in the DeviceThe primary task for the day was to unplug the MacBook Pro from my CalDigit TS3 Plus Thunderbolt 3 hub and figure out how to connect everything I needed to the Raspberry Pi.I plugged an AmazonBasics powered USB 3.0 hub into the Raspberry Pi. I chose a powered hub to prevent the internal bus of the Raspberry Pi from having to power all devices, which included:
A Kensington 240 GB SSD in an Inateck USB 3.0 SATA enclosure.
An Apple Magic Keyboard.
An Apple Magic Trackpad.
A Behringer U-Phoria USB 3.0 audio interface.
A Logitech C920 webcam.
You might not realize how much cable clutter can be created when switching computers.
I plugged in the official Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C power supply and a micro HDMI to HDMI adapter, which was plugged into my LG 4K 27-inch monitor, and then waited for the Raspberry Pi to boot up!Step 2: ReconfigurationThe first thing I did was spend nearly 30 minutes figuring out how to achieve consistent font sizes across all applications and system controls at 4K resolution (the Raspberry Pi cannot output 60Hz through its HDMI connection at 30Hz).The settings in the appearance preferences seemed to apply to some window chrome and buttons, but not to applications themselves. Therefore, at 4K resolution, when I increased the font size, the main window text of the file manager became readable. However, to make the filenames and other lists readable, I had to go into the file manager’s settings and increase the font size.Next, I enabled the “Pixel Doubling” feature, so that the original 1 pixel would be built up in 2×2 pixel blocks, making everything exactly twice the size, allowing the Raspberry Pi to run on a 4K display.If you want to play games or watch videos, this is sufficient, but of course, watching videos at 4K settings will have some slight tearing. Other content on the computer will be displayed at 1080p resolution.Finally, after a long time of setting up, I decided to stick with the original 1080p resolution, even though it made my monitor look a bit outdated. I did this to:
Reduce the load on the Raspberry Pi’s GPU (thus reducing tearing);
Allow the Raspberry Pi’s GPU to apply anti-aliasing;
Allow a 60Hz refresh rate, making it more comfortable for my eyes when watching 60fps videos.
During this time, I also had to give up using the Apple Magic Trackpad because, even after adjusting many settings, the tracking was not very precise. It felt like the trackpad was drunk.I plugged it directly into the Raspberry Pi but still encountered the same issues. So, I switched to an old Logitech mouse I use in the office, which worked better.Step 3: Workflow and AppsI began looking for alternatives to my daily apps, with mixed results. Chromium is a decent browser, and it works fine. VSCodium is a good code editor that can replace my favorite Sublime Text 3. Sublime Text 3 has a Linux version, but it doesn’t work on ARM64; many apps have this issue.I tried to compile Dropbox on the Pi OS beta, but failed. So, I installed Rclone to achieve many goals.
In terms of command line interface, the Pi OS Terminal is sufficient.For chatting, Pidgin and LimeChat work well on the Raspberry Pi.At this point, aside from not being able to find pre-built arm64 Docker images for some of my projects, I was already able to smoothly do a lot of open-source and basic work.However, I also encountered many new problems.Step 4: Discovering IssuesAt this point, I discovered a problem: many small things that can be done on a Mac either cannot be done on the Raspberry Pi or the process is quite cumbersome.For example, I quickly browse dozens of RSS feeds every morning using Reeder. To accomplish this, I had to use a painful web UI because I couldn’t find a Feedly reader that could be compiled on ARM 64.And generally, most people frequently use Twitter. On the Raspberry Pi, Cawbird can be installed, but there are two issues: 1) it frequently encounters transient errors during use; 2) it must be installed using Snap, so… I had to install snapd first and then reboot the Raspberry Pi.Let’s not discuss Snap issues here. The point I want to make is that for all the software I wanted to use, I had to spend a lot of time finding versions that could run on Linux, and then narrow it down to “running on Linux ARM64.””>I usually need to spend a few minutes compiling source code to place shortcuts in the system that can directly open programs.Step 5: Multimedia Functionality is Difficult to AchieveAfter a day, I wondered if I could do some audio and video work and create a “day experience” video on the Raspberry Pi.However, I encountered problems right from the start. I couldn’t get the audio and video devices to work properly.I opened Zoom, which recognized the Logitech C920 webcam as a video source, but I couldn’t select the microphone as the audio source. I saw the Behringer USB audio interface, but selecting it still resulted in no sound.I tried BlueJeans, but didn’t see the camera or microphone; the only option was to “join by phone.” But when I clicked that option, the BlueJeans interface froze, and I had to refresh the interface!Google Hangouts Meet recognized the webcam for video but had no audio either.Later, I listed my audio playback devices using aplay -l, and the Behringer interface appeared. arecord also listed the webcam and Behringer as valid input devices:
$ arecord --list-devices
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 2: U192k [UMC202HD 192k], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 3: C920 [HD Pro Webcam C920], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
So, I spent 30 minutes trying to record using either the webcam’s microphone or the Behringer audio interface. After several attempts, I came up with the following two valid FFmpeg commands:
One more thing to note about recording video: the Raspberry Pi’s processor cannot handle real-time transcoding and encoding at 1080p. Fortunately, the Logitech C920 has built-in hardware H.264 encoding, so you can pull the stream directly from the camera and save it to disk without any rendering.However, if I were using another camera without a built-in encoder, the Raspberry Pi could only record at 5-8 fps at 1080p/30fps. If I set it to 480p/30fps, the Raspberry Pi would record well and save it in mp4 format.For pure audio recording, I tried gnome-audio-recorder, but it couldn’t even start recording or find any audio sources, just showing the error message “Unable to set the pipeline to recording state.”ConclusionAfter all this, is the 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 worth it? The author’s conclusion is: if you want to use it as a general-purpose computer, then definitely not. But for some people, this Raspberry Pi has its unique advantages.If your computer usage mainly consists of browsing, code editing, and command line work (like backend web development, infrastructure development, blogging, etc.), then the 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 is perfectly sufficient. Even if you open a bunch of tabs, Chromium can run well.All costs add up to about $250, including keyboard, mouse, monitor, external SSD, plus the $75 Raspberry Pi, which still has an advantage over a low-end Chromebook or an old laptop. The author mentions that he is considering using the Raspberry Pi 4 as his child’s first computer.However, if you frequently use media editing software like Final Cut Pro or iMovie, it’s recommended to save up for a MacBook Pro. At least, there are currently no similar tools that run well on the Raspberry Pi unless you’re willing to sacrifice usability and stability.The author states that he may increasingly use the Raspberry Pi for server applications, as the cost-effectiveness and energy efficiency of the Raspberry Pi have improved with each generation, even rivaling much more expensive computers for certain workloads.But he doesn’t think this year is “the year of the Linux desktop.” He states that for mainstream users, “Linux on the desktop” is something that will always be 20 years away, just like nuclear fusion.
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