[proxycon]

I've tried a RPI 3b for backups & home server, but found it too slow. Also backup drives connected over USB are said to be unreliable. Since then moved to slightly bigger, but fanless & low power motherboard, with intel x86, in mITX form factor. Asrock sells a bunch of motherboard models with J-series processors. Its more expensive though

[spottybanana]

After playing with earlier generation RPi's, my opinion was that they are useless crap, not performant and stable enough for my projects. But now I tried RPi4 8GB model, and I have to say that it is entirely different beast. For my projects they have been very stable and performant so far.

[selfhoster11]

Exactly my experience. My mind boggles at the thought that a Pi 1 was considered sufficient by anyone to be a desktop replacement with its tiny amount of RAM and processing power, even back then.

[Narishma]

I used a Pi 1 for a couple of years as my main desktop. It's definitely possible if you don't need bloated apps to do your work.

[selfhoster11]

Unfortunately the modern web is the perfect definition of bloated software, and you cannot really get stuff done without it. At minimum, it's needed for banking, government documents, and e-learning/collaboration platforms.

[selfhoster11]

After setting up a NAS with a Pi 3 earlier, I came to the same conclusion: it just wasn't ready for primetime yet. The USB bus was a huge bottleneck.

Pi 4 is a different beast. It's actually feasible to run it as a NAS without greatly compromising performance. They did a great job reducing the bottleneck, to the extent that I don't mind attaching all my external drives to a couple of these.