[kevinsky]

Certainly agree that the Raspberry Pi's SD card is unsuitable as a boot device if you have any issues with power failures or voltage regulation. You can boot from a USB but by the time you pay for the USB drive you are in the same price range as other Micro computers.

[NoZebra120vClip]

I often had filesystem corruption after needing to pull the plug only once. Some Linux gurus said I should install ZFS!

I have a habit of using heavy-duty sdcards, because they also seem very susceptible to ESD in this dry, year-round desert weather.

RPis are fun toys and I got a lot of mileage out of an $80 kit I picked up while I was in community college. I got some attachments and a 7" touchscreen and I had so much fun installing Raspbian on it. I later attempted to configure it as some sort of surveillance station but that didn't go well. Then I installed the actual Pi-Hole package on it and that was great, but I eventually migrated to NextDNS.

Nowadays I have practically no use for a Linux box with a tiny screen and abysmal storage abilities. It's sitting on my desk, darkened screen for months on end. I couldn't even think of a use case. I tried making it some sort of media server to hook up to my speakers, but the media centre packages are abysmal and crashy and can't handle Bluetooth or anything useful. I couldn't even get them to play YouTube videos. They're as bad as the surveillance packages.

[kunjanshah]

Look at hifiberry and the OS that comes with it. I use it to setup airplay to some passive speakers and it works great. Supports various sources including airplay 2.

[jaredhallen]

FWIW, my home DNS has been running on a pi SD card for at least 5 years with many, many power outages (I live in a rural area with very unreliable electricity). So far it hasn't had a problem. Overall I agree with the sentiment, and will probably move off the pi at some point. Just saying the SD card situation isn't as dire as it is sometimes made out to be.

[slowmotiony]

I used a HDD connected via USB as a boot drive and after a few days of working fine it suddenly wasn't able to mount it any more, it was something to do with not enough power current in the USB ports. Lost all data and had to reformat the whole thing.

[chasil]

"the storage is WAY more reliable than micro-SD cards"

Common MLC media is good for 5,000 writes before end of life. SLC media can take 100,000 writes, and is available in SD card form (but it is more expensive).