[FlagsAreFun]

And meanwhile, more and more USFF PCs will roll out into second hand markets, which offer a much more compelling option than the Pi, unless idle draw is your main consideration. Its an unfortunate state of affairs, and I hope a Pi 5 can come around soonish to reinvigorate this market.

[jjeaff]

There have always been good small form factor options out there. But the big deal with the Pi is not just price and performance. It's all the software development and custom builds that use raspberry pi. Usff PCs don't usually have gpio pins on them, and they don't have tons of purpose built projects for them.

I have a small raspberry pi zero w running linux CUPS printer software and literally just stuck to the back of an old label printer that is plugged in on a high up shelf in my office. There isn't any other $10 device that would be reasonable for this.

I also have another zero w running piKVM in my server rack, connected to a 4 port KVM switch. So I can get full KVM access for my home servers, none of which have IP KVM built into the consumer mobos I built them with. PiKVM only works on raspberry pi and would require porting to other hardware options.

I have another raspberry pi 3b running octoprint to control my 3d printer and provide a camera feed. Octoprint also does not work on other hardware, that I know of.

Some things are much better on a small form factor intel NUC type device. I moved my home assistant off of a PI for a much more performant NUC. But that was easy only because home assistant has made their software to work on other platforms.

I think the raspberry pi W units are the real hero. But they are so difficult to get at the $10 msrp.

[musicale]

> And meanwhile, more and more USFF PCs will roll out into second hand markets, which offer a much more compelling option than the Pi

Let's hope so!

I wouldn't mind it if the Pi hardware ended a bit like OLPC - a dead end that nonetheless stimulated the mainstream market.

But I'd kind of like to see Raspberry Pi OS survive and continue running on many compatible, affordable, and actually available alternatives.

[grozzle]

There are tons of alternative single-board-computers available. The Orange Pi 5 is great for MUCH higher end performance but still under (usd)$100, and there are other options (Orange Pi 3? Banana Pi? Radxa RockPi?) that still match or beat the Raspberry Pi 4 performance for the same recommended retail price, but new stock is available for the sticker price.

Raspberry Pi OS is pretty much Debian with Broadcom drivers they haven't up-streamed yet. It runs on other SBCs, or there's Armbian, Arch for ARM, RebornOS, et cetera et cetera, all packaged for ARM uboot SBCs.

[Kirby64]

If you're just using it as a simple SBC, OrangePi may be a good option... but the hardware support with drivers and whatnot is, to my knowledge, far superior on Raspberry Pi's thanks largely to the Broadcom chipset (vs the Rockchip stuff). For many applications where it's used to do hardwarey things, it may not be a substitute.

If you're just using it to run Home Assistant, or some server application, then sure the OrangePi is probably better.

[grozzle]

My Kirb. What is this negging "yeah if you're into basic stuff" tone? I'm a fan of the genre, I own quite a few SBCs with various chipset manufacturers, and I use them for all kinds of things, from AI-vision voice-trained mobile robots to "simple" Kodi/emu boxes, and I can guarantee that so long as you notice the specific sizes and pinouts - CSI is CSI, DSI is DSI, Vulkan is Vulkan, et cetera.

Some of the more complex Adafruit / Pimoroni / Seeed hats are very specifically written for Raspberry GPIO, sure, but they have the problem of keeping you on an old OS after a year or two, unless you're willing to put in the same amount of effort as porting their examples to a different GPIO layout.

[Kirby64]

If you're into making custom stuff that fits whatever connector/pinout/etc exists, then yeah you can make almost any of these SBCs work just fine, no debate there. My point being there's an infrastructure built around Raspberry Pis that as of yet is not nearly as robust for other SBCs.

Is it worth like, $150 for a scalped Pi4? Almost certainly not. But I'd hesitate to say they're just strictly better. They're just different, and have different limitations.

[tssva]

I have several RPi4's all purchased at MSRP. I also have a few 2nd hand USFF computers. They server very different purposes and one isn't a replacement for the other.