Another lie: Raspberry Pi works. It does not.

The idea was grand! A $25 board that has a quad-core CPU, 1-2 GB of RAM, 4x USB ports, LAN, WiFi, and GPIO. Sounds very cool on the surface, does it not? Not, if you want to actually use the Pi.

It is actually good for running only one (as in 1) task at a time. Everything boils down to the bandwidth of the uSD card interface. It is absurd, at 20 MB/s peak. Even a USB attached memory stick is faster, even though some testers show that it is slower. I do not believe them because I have USB keys that transfer data at about 2x the rate. As soon as I free one up, I am going to burn Raspbian on it and try.

If you are going to experiment with USB boot on a Pi, remember that you have to set an OTP bit. Google for how.

I tried to switch from my trusted PC to a Pi for the trivial task of typing LaTeX documents in TexStudio. Wishful thinking it was! The problem is that I simultaneously need to use XMPP chat, browser, and Thunderbird for emails, plus sporadically some other softwares. Here, Pi bites the dust. It can only allow one of the programs to run. It is slow, to a point where keyboard input does not work in an already loaded application while another d/l from the Internet in the background. The CPU is only 20% used and RAM is about the same, but still the Pi becomes non-responsive.

I estimate that its performance may be improved about 2-3x by investing about $50 in an M.2 SSD and a USB adapter for it, but is it worth it? 2-3x the crawl speed of a snail is still a snail speed. Stay tuned!

Let us review, what Pi should have actually been instead of its absurd configuration.

First of all, Pi is desperately lacking storage performance. It should have had an NVME or SATA interface instead of its absurd SD card capped at 20 MB/s. You gotta be kidding! It takes 3-4 hours to install a brand new Raspbian image, and then it takes about as long to get all updates. Tsk-tsk.

Pi absolutely did not need to have 4x full-sized USB ports. The idea is terminally stupid and absurd. If one needs 4x USB devices to be attached to a Pi, buy a frigging USB hub with its own power, for crying out loud. There should have been 2x USB ports only on the board.

The space that could have been freed up by removing pesky extra USB ports could have been better used for the 2nd ethernet, thus making each Pi readily available as a router platform. The market would have doubled at least, since routers have to be energy efficient. But no, genius idiots decided that no, Pi will not be allowed to work as a router.

A full-sized HDMI port is just as idiotic. A mini-HDMI could have been used instead, and 2x of them, to boot. A single-monitor board is just that: ludicrous and stupid.

Micro-USB power? I am begging you: go and drink bleach. You could not have chosen a worse attachment for power. Give us a regular round jack that tons of power adapters have! No, you, greedy assholes, have chosen to monopolize the market in a hope of making an extra dollar. We have taken a notice.

UPDATE, yeah!

So, Pi 4 came out recently. They did learn the lessons from the previous versions! At 2x the price, we get 2x micro-HDMI ports for 4K monitors, but still only 1x ethernet and 4x USB, 2x of which are USB3.

Ehternet is now on PCIe 1x controller, which is good.

Still only 1x RAM chip soldered onto the board and no SODIMM slot.

Overall, a marginally acceptable design with many shortcomings of the old. Raspberry Pi keeps heading in the wrong direction. The only result from the introduction of Pi 4 that I expect is that college and university students will have to pay much more for their courses now. This is it. At $50+ the price tag, Pi 4 will have a hard time competing with Pi 3 on an open market, where student's hands are not twisted by the edu institution.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 12:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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