Participants: Zhang Qian, Dan Jiang, Xiao Zhou
This article is adapted from: Machine Heart
About two weeks ago, 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 after a day.
We know that a workday is not just about blogging or coding remotely. If it were just that, any Chromebook, tablet, or cheap old laptop would suffice. In addition to these, the workday content referred to by Jeff Geerling also includes:
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Using dedicated apps to browse Twitter;
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Using Slack (the memory used by Slack is more than that of most other applications Jeff Geerling runs combined at any given time);
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Recording and editing audio and video;
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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.
For browsing the internet, Raspberry Pi OS is indeed a cost-effective choice. However, using it as a real work computer can be a bit painful, which is why he abandoned the idea after a day (originally planning to stick with it for a few more days).
He wrote a blog detailing his implementation steps for the day, let’s experience it together.
Jeff Geerling: A Day with an 8GB Raspberry Pi Instead of a MacBook Pro
Step 1: Insert the Device
The primary task of 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 Raspberry Pi’s internal bus from powering all the devices, which include:
You might not realize how much clutter of cables can arise when switching computers.
I plugged in the official Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C power supply and a micro HDMI to HDMI adapter, which was connected to my LG 4K 27-inch display, and then waited for the Raspberry Pi to boot up!
The first thing I did was spend nearly 30 minutes figuring out how to achieve consistent font sizes across all applications and system controls in 4K resolution (at 30Hz, the Raspberry Pi cannot output 60Hz through its HDMI connection).
The settings in the appearance preferences seemed to apply to some window chrome and buttons but not to the contents inside applications. Thus, at 4K resolution, when I increased the font size, the main window text in the file manager became readable. However, to make file names 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, which means that the original 1 pixel would be built using 2×2 pixel blocks, thereby making all content exactly twice the size, allowing the Raspberry Pi to operate on a 4K display.
If you want to play games or watch videos, this is sufficient, though there will be some slight tearing when watching videos at 4K settings. Other content on the computer will be displayed at 1080p resolution.
Finally, after a long setup, I decided to stick with the original 1080p resolution, even though it made my display seem a bit outdated. I did this to:
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Reduce the GPU load on the Raspberry Pi (thus less tearing);
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Allow the Raspberry Pi’s GPU to apply anti-aliasing;
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Allow a refresh rate of 60Hz, 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, as even after adjusting many settings, the tracking wasn’t very accurate. 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 used in the office, which worked better.
Step 3: Workflow and Apps
I started looking for alternatives to the apps I use daily, with mixed results. Chromium is a decent browser and 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 for ARM64, and 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.
For command line interface tasks, 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 able to smoothly do a lot of open-source and basic work.
However, I also encountered many new problems.
Step 4: Discovering Issues
At this point, I discovered a problem: many small tasks that can be done on a Mac either cannot be done on the Raspberry Pi or the process is cumbersome.
For example, I quickly browse dozens of RSS feeds every morning using Reeder. To do 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, people often use Twitter. Cawbird can be installed on the Raspberry Pi, but there are two problems: 1) it frequently encounters transient errors during use; 2) it must be installed using Snap, so… I had to install snapd first and then restart the Raspberry Pi.
Let’s not discuss the Snap issues here. What I want to express is that for all the software I want to use, I have to spend a lot of time finding versions that can run on Linux, then narrow it down to “running on Linux ARM64”.
I usually need to spend several minutes compiling source code and placing shortcuts in the system to directly open programs.
Step 5: Multimedia Capabilities Are Hard to Achieve
After 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 at 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 there was still no sound after selecting it.
I tried BlueJeans, but didn’t see the camera or microphone; the only option was “join by phone”. But when I clicked that option, the BlueJeans interface locked up, and I had to refresh the page!
Google Hangouts Meet recognized the webcam for video but had no audio either.
Later, I used aplay -l to list my audio playback devices, and then 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:
# Gets sound and video from the webcam:
$ ffmpeg -ar 44100 -ac 2 -f alsa -i hw:3,0 -f v4l2 -codec:v h264 -framerate 30 -video_size 1920x1080 -itsoffset 0.5 -i /dev/video0 -copyinkf -codec:v copy -codec:a aac -ab 128k -g 10 -f mp4 test.mp4
# Sound from Behringer, video from webcam:
ffmpeg -ar 44100 -ac 2 -f alsa -acodec pcm_s32le -i hw:2,0 -f v4l2 -codec:v h264 -framerate 30 -video_size 1920x1080 -itsoffset 0.5 -i /dev/video0 -copyinkf -codec:v copy -codec:a aac -ab 128k -g 10 -f mp4 test-webcam-audio.mp4
One more thing to note about recording video: the Raspberry Pi’s processor cannot transcode and encode 1080p in real-time. Fortunately, the Logitech C920 has built-in hardware H.264 encoding, allowing you to directly extract the stream 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 would only be able to 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, only giving the error message “Failed to set the pipeline to recording state”.
After all this, is the 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 worth getting? 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 involves browsers, code editors, and command lines (like backend web development, infrastructure development, blogging, etc.), then the 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 is completely sufficient. Even if you open a bunch of tabs, Chromium runs well.
All costs add up to about $250, including keyboard, mouse, display, external SSD, plus the $75 Raspberry Pi, which is still quite advantageous compared to a low-end Chromebook or an old laptop. The author mentioned 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, iMovie, etc., it is recommended to save money for a MacBook Pro. At least, there are currently no similar tools that can run well on the Raspberry Pi, unless you are 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 continues to improve with each generation, even rivaling much more expensive computers under certain workloads.
But he does not believe this year is the “year of Linux desktop”. He states that for mainstream users, “Linux on the desktop” will always be a matter of 20 years down the line, just like nuclear fusion.
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/i-replaced-my-macbook-pro-raspberry-pi-4-8gb-day
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