Hacker News Reader

Comment by JeffRosenberg | Hacker News Reader

Who is using a Raspberry Pi to browse the web and watch Youtube videos? That's a crazy way to review an SBC.

If the advertised features are the gpu and 4k, it's the minimum that should work well.

(The RPi actually runs a browser pretty well).

Unless you have a need for using the GPIO pins or the camera interface, I really don't see a compelling use case for SBCs in general. I am happily using a network of Raspberry Pis to control my model railroad and I have track sensors connected to the GPIO pins. I have also used a Raspberry to acquire data from a CO2 sensor via USB and upload to a server. I put a few of them around my house and discovered that some rooms had disconcertingly high levels. What I have _not_ done with Raspberry Pi is to surf the web!

What CO2 sensors are you using? (I understand that the cheaper ones infer CO2 levels from measuring other things, but interested all the same).

Its this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H7HFINS/ref=oh_aui_sear...

I put a four of them around my house, each connected to a Raspberry Pi. CO2 levels were way higher than I expected.

Thanks. Huh, they're far more expensive on amazon.co.uk (£132)!

They're pretty much the cheapest general purpose PC one can purchase. The market for cheap PCs is _enormous_.

And the RPi can output composite video, making it accessible to just about anyone with television.

It's not bad except that video playback in the browser is not really up to the mark. Wouldn't a Chrome book be a cheaper and better solution for people who need to a general web browsing system?

The RPi is incredibly popular as a Kodi and emulation machine. Browsing the web and watching YouTube videos is well within its abilities; the YouTube plugin on Kodi is a reasonable good, ad-free interface to YouTube.

That said, yes, some websites are grotesquely slow; but that's more a poor reflection on them.

The primary factor with using a Desktop Linux is GPU support. The Videocore IV in the Raspberry Pi is as close as to open source as you're going to get on an ARM board. Plus it's been around since 2013 according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

Compared to this to the Mali-T720 MP2 in the Orange Pi 3, GPU support in Linux is virtually non-existent. https://linux-sunxi.org/Mali

This article is a little outdated but is still very relevant: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/7037-multimedia-related-stuf...

Also, note that GPU support on Android is usually a lot better compared to Linux. This is because they are using an older, more mature kernel.

>Also, note that GPU support on Android is usually a lot better compared to Linux. This is because they are using an older, more mature kernel.

The kernel has very little to do with GPU support. It only contains a small shim to allow userspace libraries to access the hardware.

GPU support on Android is done entirely through proprietary code, sourced from the chip vendor. Even projects like Lineage OS use binary blobs pulled from the vendor's packages.

For 1080p video decoding, the Pi is actually surprisingly good at it (smooth source file playback at the original 30 fps). I use it as a Kodi machine plugged into my TV.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com