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Comment by avhception | Hacker News Reader

I really think the RPi has the potential to become the de-facto ARM desktop, very much like the IBM PC became the de-facto x86 machine. I really wish the boot procedure and all that wasn't so proprietary.

It's unfortunate that the RPi foundation doesn't acknowledge this potential more.

It feels like the RPi is stuck in the middle between being a low-cost board for GPIO tinkering and being a low-cost general-purpose computer, being not really that good at either task. Maybe they should create a coreboot-enabled board that is a little more pricey, starting at 60 or 80$ or something, for the "ARM-PC" (the RasPC!) market and separate that from the board for the tinkerers.

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Like the '400' model built into a keyboard released fairly recently?

> Really think the RPi has the potential to become the de-facto ARM desktop

I'd say it already is yet still isn't particularly useful in this role.

As soon as it gets able to run YouTube without visible performance problems and adds some spare PCIe lanes so you won't have to sacrifice USB 3.0.

By the way I wonder why does my almost-decade-old smartphone run YouTube (in a browser as well as the app) perfectly while Raspbery Pi 4 seems having much harder time doing that.

> the RPi has the potential to become the de-facto ARM desktop, very much like the IBM PC became the de-facto x86 machine

Your use of "de facto" implies a significant presence in the retail marketplace such that consumers choose the product readily without seeking options.

The RPi is unlikely to ever achieve this in 2021 and beyond. However, the RPi 400 is a brilliant device. I recommend it over just about any other computing option except maybe a mid- to high-end Chromebook.

From the point of view of sustainability, the RPi 400 is a much better option than a Chromebook.

Good CPU, but the GPU is only 32 GFLOPS https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-raspberry_pi_4_b_broadcom_... https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=244519

I think the de-facto ARM desktop is already here. It's the M1 Mac.

With its blackbox boot procedure and all of the security stuff you have to disable to even run a pared down kernel with limited support for basically everything since the system architecture is also a blackbox, I'd disagree. It's unlikely to be reversed engineered into a defacto standard like the IBM PC was.

RPi foundation has its goals and it follows them well. I hope they will not get distracted by "ideology".

The 400 model of Pi has a potential to start something comparable to microcomputer boom in the 80s and become first step into ARM desktops (again) I believe and also become the standard for machines used in education - if someone will play this out well. Smartphones and tablets dominate consumer market nowadays for sure but these are largely entertaining devices only not offering much when it comes to education; of course you can install apps but you're still limited by form factor.

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