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Comment by karolist | Hacker News Reader

I never quite got the appeal of Rpi's. When I needed a silent low power home server box 10 years ago I went with Intel Atom x86 based board which supported virtualization and had expandable memory. When I needed a small low power box for and observer node this year I bought a Dell Wyse 3040 for 40€, also x86. If I wanted a general purpose PC I'd still go with a NuC or Minisforum these days.

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None of these have GPIOs, typically. A usecase you didn't mention is "I want a MCU to do electronics but easier to program, with Linux and a shell".

Just get a usb to gpio adapter. Arduinis can be flashed to do this also. So it's just a few dollars to get the capability on a PC.

It's marketing. For someone like me with little familiarity of the mini computer and microcontroller world, I know about raspberry pi and arduino. I know there are many others out there with likely better value and quality, but the perception of accessibility to a newbie drops off of a cliff.

I’m guessing that 40 Euro price isn’t MSRP but some discount on a used one?

Yes, but there seems to be a pretty reliable supply of used thin clients. I have no idea who still buys new thin clients, but whoever it is must replace them regularly.

For a lot of stuff it just comes down to convenience, there's community projects that are primarily distributed as raspi sd card images (home assistant and octoprint come to mind).

Do any of the alternatives you've listed expose GPIO pins ?

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