If you want to host something on a Raspberry Pi, you should consider using literally any other piece of hardware
If you want to host something on a Raspberry Pi, you should consider using literally any other piece of hardware
There are a lot of reasons not to give them your money. They're assholes to the maker community and they openly talk shit on a lot of their customer base. That's beside the point, though, really.
It's just not a spectacular option for hosting. In order to get a Rpi competitive with even the shittiest laptop from 7 years ago, you're going to end up spending more than you would spend on a decent laptop from 7 years ago.
If it is a computer that turns on, it will likely function orders of magnitude better than an Rpi and won't bind you to ARM architecture. My entire hosting setup was pulled out of a recycling pile for free. Install ubuntu/ubuntu server and enjoy yourself.
If you intend on spending any amount of money on this hobby, I cannot express enough how much I recommend against any of that money going toward a Raspberry Pi.
EDIT: A lot of you seem to be reading this as "Raspberry Pis are all nonfunctional" and getting mad about it. Don't do that.
Edit 2: Good to see that all the stupid parts of reddit made it here
The moderator team will take this as a learning opportunity. We don't have any rules for this community specific to rudeness or insults. This post was fine as an opinion piece until Edit 2. For this reason, I'm locking the post. Additionally, we'll be updated the community rules on the Sidebar shortly.
I love to hate claims like this. it’s like a fart, but ends up being a shart. No truth in the source and unjustified noise and grumbles that leaves a mess and confuses people for no reason.
Do yourself a favor, either cite links that legitimize your claims or just sign off, you’re hangry.
I'm just here to say that I've never heard any of the negative claims that OP makes from anyone else before.
What I have seen and heard is that the RPi foundation doing a lot of good by providing low cost computers for educational use and anyone else who wants a good, small, and cheap computer.
Yes and, classically, if you specifically haven't heard or looked into something, it's not true so my bad
It really doesn't matter to me that much if you live the rest of your life being wrong. Google is free.
You seem to have conveniently left out power consumption.
I agree they are very pricey these days. Are there any competitiors that offer cheap low-power consumption computers?
It will not be that great like on Raspberry Pi, but Mini PC are also very low on energy. For example,. Wyse 5070 with J5005 idles around 3-5 W, which is really great. i had HP 800 Mini G3 that idled ~7-8W. Mini PCs are more powerful, expandable and can use normal SSD Drive. For selfhosting they are better, but in some places Raspberry Pi (or alternative like Orange Pi) will be better, especially when you need something small and really low power
Yeah, power consumption is never talked about enough when talking about that type of hardware. I do have an old PC I could use as a server, but I don't need more heating at home. Mini-PCs are cool, but how cool are they?
But anyway, I haven't been able to buy a RPi at decent price in years, so 🤷🏻♂️
You seem to have conveniently left out power consumption.
Exactly. Thus, even a rpi 4 w/ 2 GiB is serviceable enough as is if you know what you are doing.
You'd probably be shocked at how close a 65w supply charging a laptop battery at trickle voltages and a 2A 5v power supply maxed out 24/7 can come to each other
Euuhh what? I used to use an old pc but found out I could save about NZ$100 per year on power by switching to an RPi4. It hosts about 15 things, like sonarr, radarr, home assistant, pi hole, nzbget, photoview, Frigate, and backups, without any issues. Yes it's not super power full but it's perfect for me.
You cant beat rpi with power usage, but PC can draw <10W on idle. Well my server is more like 20-25W, but thats 25ish € a year here. Rpi would be 5-10 € a year. I pay around 0.12 €/kwh in Croatia
What OS are you using with your RP4to host all that?
Just standard raspberry headless os. Everything running in containers except pi hole.
I've installed a heat sink and a fan, triggered at 70c. Also have set some cpu docker limits on eg frigate and nzbget to ensure it doesn't take the rest down.
But it performs surprisingly well. Load is 1 on average, goes up a bit when eg motion is detected, an nzb is parred/extracted, or photoview is indexing stuff.
Also recently added Paperless. Set everything to minimum, eg one document at a time.
You cant beat rpi with power usage, but PC can draw <10W on idle. Well my server is more like 20-25W, but thats 25ish € a year here. Rpi would be 5-10 € a year. I pay around 0.12 €/kwh in Croatia. If you can save 100 nz$ you have hungry PC or your electricity is not cheap at all :)
I didn't say that raspberry pis are nonfunctional.
Can you expand on some of this?
I haven't really heard much regarding them being bad to their community/customer base, though I haven't bought in a few years.
In regards to cost/performance, what are you meaning you'd need to spend extra on to match that of an old laptop or recycled machine?
Not OP, but my Lenovo tiny computer on ebay is about $60 and will run circles around a raspberry pi
Power usage isn't too much higher, it's upgradeable, and it's x86-64 architecture so more things are supported.
My tiny has an i7 and was a bit more expensive, but it's a powerful little guy. I added more ram for a total of 32, and it does better than my "old" server (technically from same era).
Can't speak for the other stuff.
if you don’t want to be replacing sd cards
The truth hurts, but this is the truth. Clawing at those little shits is the most annoying thing ever.
I've heard log2ram can make the SD cards last much longer, I usually just make it read only though.
If you don't want to be replacing sdcards every two weeks, you'll need to add a hard drive with an enclosure which will also need power. You'll also need an upgraded power supply for the pi. To deal with any sort of scale, you'll need more than one in a swarm. If you don't want them just out in the open air, you'll either need to coat them or put them in cases. It just all adds up to way more than a $5 ebay laptop with a broken screen that has 20x the performance.
That is a whole lot of text just to say "Rpi bad" -- its (still) the best single board computer for both performance and low power draw.
While I completely agree with you on the asshole part, you also have to factor in that right now the Pi still remains the most dominant hardware in that category. Furthermore, I think you're missing the point of what makes a hobby... a hobby.
There's plenty of stuff that maybe I don't want to self host on the same device and that I would rather host on RPI due to power consumption for example. Not all about money and recycling old computers, but regarding ecology also spending less energy it's extremely important. Imagine a full desktop computer just to host pihole + pivpn. Sorry but your statement is pretty bias.
There are a lot of reasons not to give them your money. They’re assholes to the maker community and they openly talk shit on a lot of their customer base.
Citation needed, Pi's are just a single member of the broader SBC market. They are great for a lot of projects, especially for beginners who are their primary market, or those unfamiliar with Linux systems.
It’s just not a spectacular option for hosting. In order to get a Rpi competitive with even the shittiest laptop from 7 years ago, you’re going to end up spending more than you would spend on a decent laptop from 7 years ago.
Citation needed, currently for what I use my Pi's for, they are massive overkill. A laptop has WAY more breakable, and less repairable parts. A pi is a SBC, nothing I don't need. I don't want a screen, I don't want a keyboard, I don't want an ancient battery that is probably bloated from being plugged in all the time, and I absolutely do not want a fan. Honestly the Pi zero is overkill for most of my stuff, I just do actually want a wired network port. Your measure of "competitive" is extremely flawed, because you assume the only thing a Pi is useful for is it's raw number crunching power when that's not at all what they are marketed towards. In all honesty, I'd love to see a laptop that was even 50% as good a a Pi, but for that weight and size you're looking almost entirely at used phones, whose OS is significantly more locked down. Can't exactly run Docker on Android, let alone dealing with running servers over wifi.
If it is a computer that turns on, it will likely function orders of magnitude better than an Rpi and won’t bind you to ARM architecture. My entire hosting setup was pulled out of a recycling pile for free. Install ubuntu/ubuntu server and enjoy yourself.
How could I mount a laptop to my garage door for presence detection of which car is coming and going? Would be kind of an eyesore wouldn't you think, without even mentioning the weight problems. Laptops are massive compared to a Pi. For your point on ARM specifically, that's a feature my friend. Alternative cpu architectures are pretty interesting, and I personally have been an avid RISC-V follower for years now, and am absolutely thrilled to bits waiting for a standardized RV solution like the Pi. How lucky of you to just be given everything for free, thanks for taking e-waste out of the landfills for a little while I guess. Most of us have to buy the products we use, maybe getting something from a friend once in a while.
If you intend on spending any amount of money on this hobby, I cannot express enough how much I recommend against any of that money going toward a Raspberry Pi.
What do you recommend instead?
Sounds like arduinos and a laptop is what you want
edit: sorry in advance for how unenthusiastic this response is. I'm real fucking tired of talking about this to a crowd of people who have already decided I could never be correct
Arduinos can't really handle video encoding and presence detection on board. A laptop is extreme overkill, as I said in my post. Don't want a battery, screen, keyboard, hinges, and fans are a deal breaker. Old laptops are bulky, heavy, have proprietary power bricks that are never cross compatible with each other. A laptop and a SBC are just totally different markets, and are used for totally different things.
I use mine for my pihole and have been pretty happy. $40 bucks, tiny footprint and power consumption. I have a 3 from 2018. I get where your coming from but gonna need some sauce for your claims.
and won’t bind you to ARM architecture
Just wait when people start self-hosting stuff in RISC-V machines lol
X86_64 being a duopoly is a worse scenario. So, I'm happy to fight in the middle of software poorly tested in different architectures.
Friends! Mixed architectures are always exciting, I cannot wait for something as standardized as the Pi for RISC-V.
Thank you for your service!
If I need something more powerful for stuff like my Minecraft server I use an old laptop running Fedora, but my pi 4 works great as a super low profile, low power, stable http and ssh server.
What's this stuff about the pi foundation being assholes though, can someone fill me in?
My raspberrypi works great as a backup git server, as long as it doesn’t fall off my table and get stepped on or rolled over by my chair. I also host a few static webpages on it for cooking recipes.
It actually has better uptime than my desktop, which I occasionally boot into windows when I (rarely!) encounter a steam game that doesn’t work well on Linux.
It does not work well as a DLNA server though, though it seems to manage lower resolution videos okay. I think I tried both tried reading videos from the SD card, and a USB external hard drive.
I have mine in a closet so I don't have that issue where it might fall on the floor and get destroyed.
It has significantly better uptime then my PC since I main windows on it (windows gives me more fps in games and I don't wanna dual boot) and I restart right away whenever there's an update
Im guessing it's this: https://www.dexerto.com/tech/raspberry-pis-latest-hire-is-an-ex-cop-who-built-surveillance-devices-2009036/
Their PR and social media managers are pretty shit honestly. But I can't say for the other founders, or if this applies to the the Raspberry Pi foundation itself.
If this was the reason for OPs claims about the foundation I really would rather they elaborate rather than the rest of us guess what they're talking about.
What if I care about power draw? Should I go for alternatives? BananaPi, OrangePi and so on?
If you need reallllly low draw like for battery powered devices then a pi could be the right choice. But x86 low power mobile/laptop CPUs in the last 5 years or so can get really close to a pi for power usage.
I have 2 systems with passively cooled i3-7100u CPUs and they idle at like 2W of power draw each.
They're more expensive, but check out ODroid H3+. Very low power consumption and great options for storage with pcie m.2 and on board SATA, and RAM slots.
I'll need to get some links on any of this. But I generally use VM's or VPS my self.
Links? OP is sharing their experience and expressing an opinion. What do you want links for?
Expression of an opinion is starting a sentence with "I think that x...."
OP wasn't expressing an opinion but stating items that I wanted to get examples of.
What a spectacularly ironic post OP. You make an incredible claim while providing zero proof. Can you see how that makes you the asshole, talking shit about RPi foundation? On top of that you edited your post to call us all stupid for calling you out. Incredible.
I do agree that stuff like the RPi 4 is in a weird spot where it's too weak for a lot of things but also too expensive for the light stuff. The biggest gripes I have are the SD cards which makes data intensive tasks impossible/expensive and overall makes it so you need to think about not causing to much writing. That and how hard they are to place. Large enough to be ugly and in the way but small so they're awkward to find a good spot for.
However I think the RPi zeroes are amazing for building small but intelligent sensors like picking up when a specific bluetooth device enters a room or a small microphone to create a relay point for a voice assistant. They're super easy to program since they still run basic Linux compared to other alternatives that are more efficient sure and some even cheaper but require you to access them via COM or learn much more machine close coding. Which puts up a massive hurdle for prototyping and playing around with the possibilities.
As for using old laptops that a big ehhh for me. Find yourself a used NUC instead. Much better form factor and the same power or even better. Though if they dont need to be visible then I really do prefer a small desktop, then it can have decent fans and hold hard drives. Everybody needs a NAS right? And building one yourself is easy and they make for excellent home servers too.
Used NUCs don't have built-in UPSs, like used laptops do.
Battery is the first thing to give and a 7 year old one as the post is on about is unlikely to have much use left as a UPS. But sure, in theory that's nice but if you need UPS then buy a dedicated solution, since that's actually reliable. If you don't really need it then don't buy laptops for that reason.
As for using old laptops that a big ehhh for me. Find yourself a used NUC instead.
Yes, but that costs money and I already have the laptop in my possession. Which is the majority reason why old laptops are used for this kind of thing.
Sure but that is a different premise than the post isn't it? They explicitly talk about buying an old laptop.
I've been using Pi 4 since 2019 and it's helped me manage stuff through the pandemic. I also overall agree with this post since I've spent many many hours diagnosing issues with the Pi that otherwise would not have happened on other mini PCs.
That said, there really isn't a market for mini PCs in my region so this is what I'm stuck with for the foreseeable future.
If anyone is looking for ARM SBC alternatives since Raspberry Pis are so expensive:
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078RT6H8X/
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074P6BNGZ/
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFVFF3FV/
Do note that if you are doing any IOT/anything with the pin inputs/outputs of an SBC, you're going to have to match the pins/change some config in your code to make it work with these boards. It shouldn't be too hard, it's an SBC after all, but compatibility issues arise all the same.
Cheers
In lieu of a better source I found this BuzzFeed News article with the Google search "Raspberry pi mastodon controversy". Though I admit I had no idea what op might be talking about until this moment. Some zingers by BF in there though:
She added, “I don’t think any of the people complaining here would not call the police if their house was burgled.” When BuzzFeed News pointed out that police don’t surveil burglars, Upton agreed that’s true.
Class.
I've been testing some alternative SBCs like the OrangePi 5.
Currently mine is a fallback DNS server and reverse proxy for my network, trying to come up with some other uses for it.
They're still low power ARM boxes, but they're much cheaper than the RPi is at the moment.
They also have really bad support. And i'm not talking about holding your hand. I'm talking about hardware support.
I almost ordered an Orange Pi5 yesterday. I realized I still have a couple RPi4s around, and I'd just be spending money on something I really don't need. I'm waiting for a good excuse though, the reviews looked pretty solid. What are your impressions?
Doesn't come with a power adapter and has weird power requirements. Wouldn't power up at all with a standard 5V 1A wall plug, needed 5V 4A.
Apart from that it's been perfectly fine. I wish other OS than the armbian they provide supported this CPU.
Nice.
I've had acceptable outcomes on LibreComputer boxes running Armbian. I've had terrible luck with anything except the core Armbian image, but for a lot of stuff, Armbian on Libre gets the job done during the chip shortage.
I recently moved off a combination of Pi 4 and an old netbook to the ODroid H3+. Orders of magnitude faster while having socketed storage and RAM. The best part is the NVME and SATA ports that let me attach 41TB of raw storage and add a data warehousing nature to my setup. 10/10 would buy again.
I use my pi for Pi-hole and pivpn. Any other server I spin up is typically on an old laptop.
Unless you already have it, to be honest
I always wanted one, but it is hard to justify since I use my NAS for everything... I'd use it a second pihole though.
Pihole runs way better on PCs, though. I've also found that I prefer Adguard in docker beckended by nextdns more than anything else I've tried.
Old thin clients are worth looking at as rpi replacements. I have one as a (2D) print sever, for a printer that only has windows drivers.
The only real advantage rpi has these days is the amount of stuff that's prepacked as OS images for them. Technically speaking other SBC usually have a better price/performance ratio.
Are other single board computers like OragnePI or Libre Computer any better?
@MarioBarisa
Not...overly? Many can't run a mainline kernel. Most have lackluster performance.If you already have one, it's meeting your needs, and you're not bothered with the flash storage failing, carry on. But you really are better off scrounging a junk laptop/workstation in most other cases.
That said, I've also had that bite me. Some of those are junked for a reason and they can be flaky. Availability can differ in your area. 🤷♂️ Use what works for you.
I love little ARM SBCs but my self-hosting journey accelerated drastically when I gave in and started using 8yo x86 hardware instead.
A couple rounds of upgrades later and I can also see how much more compute/$ one gets out of x86 as well. Even relatively recent PC hadware is absolutely dirt cheap used.
I have an Optiplex 7050 SFF that I dumped a few hundred dollars worth of upgrades into for shits and giggles when I ran it as my daily driver; then I built a beastly Ryzen system to daily and shunted the Optiplex over to server duties, replacing the previous server (14 year-old HP Elitedesk 8100 SFF).
The Optiplex runs everything I can throw at it with ease, far better than the HP could have ever hoped to do.
haha, all 3 x86 servers I started with are OptiPlex SFF. Commodity business PCs for the win.
I've since upgraded two of them to even smaller 1L USFF PCs (one Dell one HP) and the beastliest OptiPlex SFF (i7-4770) is now my database server and NAS box. All of them run Proxmox.
I will argue from experience that Homeassistant runs pretty damn good on a pi using an SSD. They have an image specifically for HA as well.
Anytime I start with a Pi, I end up getting frustrated with the performance and just virtualize it on x86.
🤓🤓🤓