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by JeremyNT
1182 days ago
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> I typically see two kinds of raspi hate, and only one of them is reasonable imo. The first is stuff like this article, where you can probably get something better than a raspi these days for about the same price (especially when you consider scalper pricing) or just run a docker image in a server you can make with an old computer. This is very good advice, especially now that getting a raspi at MSRP is borderline impossible. This bit was always the head scratcher to me. I've never owned or worked with a pi, simply because I have an old SFF PC that is many times more powerful. I remember reading stuff here on HN about people building k8s clusters and similar things on raspis... why would you do this to yourself? Just virtualize on the junky old PC if you really want to have multiple "nodes" of some sort. I get there are use cases where "put a small slow computer in a physical location" is what you actually want, but it feels like raspi gets jammed into a lot of uses which don't make much sense. Just because you can doesn't mean you should... |
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An RPI uses as much power as charging a phone. Your old junk PC probably uses an order of magnitude more, and most people don't need the extra CPU power. Why waste electricity? I bought all of mine at MSRP, and at that price its likely covered by the savings on power quickly.
That said, I've also used a few "thin client" PCs to build a cluster when I got the space. As much as I've wanted it, I can't convince the better half to let me install a full server rack in our guest bedroom (or pay for electricity).
On top of all this, it's small, so it can fit anywhere. I ran a few hanging with zipties under the bed frame in my dorm room years ago. My first apartment was 400sqft - I threw out my "server" PC I built and used a few Pis. When not in use they fit in a shoebox or drawer, so it's easy to have extras.