It used to have its use cases and still can if you can get one cheap. I bought a 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 last year for €35. It runs Home Assistant and Pi-hole. I prefer it over leaving my media server running all day since it uses vastly less power.

and yet here we are, using a meme depicting a wife abusing piece of shit.

The hardware itself was never particularity novel. The strength was in the software, support, and community which made the barrier to entry low and learning new skills easy.

I got a couple Pi Zeros for $5 each. For years they both have been significantly contributing to my quality of life by blocking ads on two networks with Pi Hole software.

Yeah nowadays they’re like $100 for even the most basic unit

isn't that some bad dude or sth ... i heard rumors

Ayyyyy same use case here

CAN WE NOT HAVE ONE FUCKING NICE THING

I agree that it is overrated, but I do also think that it still has value and is legitimately pretty cool. It's nice that it's so tiny and cheap and easy to set up in like under an hour. Low power consumption for simple things that are nice to run all the time makes it feel pretty friendly on the environment versus running a whole desktop computer or server 24-7.

Yet, like many things that are really good, there ends up being a lot of people who want to sing its praises from the heavens as being not just really good, but the greatest thing ever. And so indeed the Pi is also overrated despite being really cool

Apples and oranges hardware-wise (and maybe having actually taken an intro to C++ course and not python plays a bias), but I found Arduino more approachable for a noob, given the Arduino has example code and a library manager within the IDE. RPi felt less guided to me and required a lot more external reference. That said, there's something to be appreciated about just saving the .py and having the program run without having to wait a minute to compile.

PREACH OP!

Kinda. I'm self-hosting on a computer that, if it were a human child, would be in third grade. Didn't need to buy a Pi with worse specs to do the same job at twice the hassle.

Enterprise thin clients are cheaper and faster, though they use more power with x86/64 cpus

Where do people buy thin clients for cheap? Ebay?

In terms of GPIO only, Arduino is quicker to get started. Getting an LED to blink is easier on Arduino because you don't need to setup SSH or use the Pi's GUI. It's just that the Pi can do so much more than basic GPIO controlling.

I just started with my new project, a table top retro arcade machine. Using a raspi 5 is the best I can get now, even overpriced. The prices are through the roof for thin clients or mini PC so my planning shiftet to raspi again.

If you have another suggestion I am open for it. I should be capable to run under Batocera and emulate up to Gen 6.

Yep. I was just looking at a (dell) wyse 3040 and wyse 5070.

The Pi was revolutionary when it first came out, there had never been a device with its combination of small size, compute capability and low price before. But over time other devices have caught up if not exceeded the Pi's capabilities and it no longer stands out in any particular way.

Pretty much.
A few years ago I got an hp t620 thin client with an older AMD embedded quad core cpu for like 25€. I ran my home server on that for a while until I upgraded to something bigger.
You can still get the same device for pretty much the same price. You can even upgrade storage and RAM fairly easily (and cheaply, since it’s DDR3 and m.2 SATA).
And if CPU-Monkey is to be believed, it has about the same CPU performance as a RasPi 4 and 4x the graphics performance.

Oh I know. I have one Pi running Home Assistant, and another running a print server for a printer that has a shitty NIC.

What I’ve used RPi for:

1. Finishing masters thesis when my PC died at most unfortunate time possible.
2. Controlling 3D printers.
3. Connecting old boring paper printers to home network.
4. Making my dumb TV smart (worth noting that RPi also supports HDMI-CEC, so no additional remote required).
5. Hosting all kinds of stuff - websites, web-services, gaming servers, Discord bots, git server, VPNs, Pi-Hole etc.
6. Controlling radio transceivers (SDR).
7. Controlling robots.

I’ve probably forgotten something. But yes - it’s a miniature miracle worker, that I used to throw at my problems. 🗿

Ditto. I built a starship computer for my niece that ran on Pygame.

Honestly, I'm surprised that there aren't more alternatives by now. It's been such a fixture for so many years I would've expected alternatives, but every few years I go looking and end up buying another Pi for my project.

It's kind of indispensable for so many projects.

Yes, you do wonder. Glad I could answer that for you.

Raspberry Pi B+ on AdaFruit for $29.95

I agree with you that it sucks that the latest gen aren't $45 anymore, but they still make and sell a $30 computer. If anyone can do better I definitely want to know.

Can you share some links?

I’ve used some alternatives that are cool tho, like Pine boards (sadly, haven’t seen them in stock for quite a while now), NanoPi’s and BeagleBone’s (except “AI” models - their kernels are buggy unfinished mess).

Sadly, today’s economy and decision of Raspberry Pi Foundation to shift away from enthusiast and education market made buying a used thin client more viable option for many things one would use RPi for.

I’ve seen used Mac Mini’s on marketplaces at price tags comparable to RPi’s - you just can’t make this shit up.

I'm not sure what kind of links you're looking for, but there are plenty of sites with the history of the Pi series available with a simple search.

Both are excellent devices. It's hard to compare them from a hardware standpoint because I think there are so few cases in which you would have to pick between these two.

I think you could compare them in terms of fan appeal, in the same way you can compare Liverpool FC and the Greenbay Packers, not as rival teams but as two totally different teams that people love. But just like in that case, it would seem silly to argue that the Packers are better than Liverpool (or vice versa), you know?

But over time other devices have caught up if not exceeded the Pi’s capabilities and it no longer stands out in any particular way.

If this is true, it's great news to me, and I'd like you to show me where I can get a nice, cheap, well-supported single board computer.

That's interesting. What's a thin client? I'm not familiar.

A Mac Mini seems like an interesting option. What OS do you run on it?

Because of its documentation, community and software ecosystem.
That makes it especially a good entry point for beginners. At least it was when prices were still acceptable.

Nothing is cheap any more, not even (perhaps especially) the Raspberry Pi, but there are plenty of options out there with similar specs, sizes and prices. The Raspberry offerings are no longer unique as they were when it first released.

A thin client is typically a low-end mini PC that doesn't run heavy applications itself, but rather connects to a virtual machine on a server.

Got my first in for $5

Yep.

Using a 2019 small form factor Dell desktop as an ESXI server running a handful of VM's: Windows, Debian, DietPi, etc. I hammer the VM's sometimes doing video conversion and everything just works.

Best part is it consumes less than 20 watts at idle, and maxes at 80 watts. Hard to beat.

Okay great. Please share examples.

(If you don't respond or reply without examples, I'm not going to reply to it, but everyone reading this is gonna know that you're talking out of your ass.)

Huh. Can you point to any good projects that demonstrate this? Because I don't see how this is a substitute for a Pi.

Currently, I'm looking to replace an upgrade an instance of NextCloud running on a Pi, and I'm curious if this is an option.

http://www.orangepi.org/

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded-systems/

https://www.friendlyelec.com/

https://radxa.com/

https://pine64.org/

https://www.hardkernel.com/

Many people are going for Mini PCs now, which are obviously larger than the Pi, but can be found for similar prices and offer x86-64 rather than ARM as most SBCs do.

Happy?

You can get a pi 5 with 1 GB of RAM for $42 at Micro Center still.

Waow I can get one of those for $50...

I used HP Thin Client T430 to smart my dumb TV as it has HDMI (although it just has a chip that converts DP to HDMI inside the box). Used ones are easily found and very cheap. Requires additional adapter for CEC though.

But for NextCloud instance I’d probably just go with ThinkCentre USFF rather than thin client (maybe 920q) as those are quite beefy for their size, while still being dirt cheap.

Running a NanoPi R76S as a home router with OpenWRT. Thing's amazing.

It used to be $30. That's why it goy popular. Broligarchs ruined that along with everything else too.

Yep. 3040 is soldered ram but 5070 has upgradable sodimm

the Pi was never the important thing. the community around it was always the big draw. that community inspired a whole generation of DIYers and people interested in STEM. the impact of the Pi is understated, if anything, because that community branched out to other devices and tech.

I thought we all agreed two years go to let this meme die because Steven Chowder (a well-known grifter) is the guy in the photo.

I digress; how old are you OP? Do you remember when the Pi first launched? As everyone else already pointed out, it was revolutionary for its time.

Edit: And yes I spelled his name incorrectly on purpose; fuck him

Get a new meme format, or I'm going to continue to assume you like Steven Crowder and are, in fact, an ignorant bigoted crybaby nepo-turd.

Now we have $7 esp32. Smaller, cheaper and does a lot of cool stuff.

It's a pretty bad dude, yeah.

Very important info thank you.