>DATE: Sun May 9 13:13 MDT 2021

My Experience Using a Pi 4 As my Primary Computer

It has been a little over a week since I started using my 8 GB Pi 4 as my primary computer. When I started, my goal was to take a minimalistic approach to computing and to use a less power hungry device. Over the last week, I have not been fully able to avoid my laptop since I've needed to run MATLAB and Zoom a few times for my college classes, but I have been using my Pi for everything else. I must say that I have been surprised at how usable this thing is as a desktop computer. Granted, you need to run something other than Raspberry Pi OS because the desktop UI kind of sucks. For me, Manjaro ARM, the i3 flavor, seems to do quite nicely.

There are a few drawbacks though. The first and foremost is that there are momentary freezes that last only a few seconds when one tries to do anything computationally intensive, like trying to use Firefox. Though it isn't a terrible experience, I have started using Qutebrowser since it is a lighter program than Firefox. That has helped quite a bit. The next problem is video playback. Don't get me wrong, it is more than possible to get decent video playback on a Pi 4, but in general this is a difficult feat to achieve. For me, I've mostly watched videos on a different device. The last major problem is software. While Manjaro and the AUR do a good job of delivering software for an ARM platform, there are some things that just aren't supported. Alacritty is one such program, and that is unfortunately due more to the GPU accelerated features of that terminal emulator than anything else.

Before I go any further, I must add that I have overclocked this Pi to 2 GHz. Fortunately my passive cooling case keeps it below 70°C during heavy loads, so things get a little toasty. Just not dangerously so. Overall, the Pi 4 can work quite well as a desktop computer — I'm even running it with two 1080p monitors. Though this setup wouldn't be my first choice, it feels good to be using something that is just powerful enough for nearly everything I need to do and that just sips power while I'm using it.

The point is, most people don't need a powerful computer, and the computers most people use require much more power than they should. Hopefully the future of computing isn't just more powerful computers, but also more energy efficient computers. I know that better energy efficiency is a byproduct of smaller lithographies, but we seem to be asking more of our hardware every day. Efficient software is an important factor here. More things should be written to run on older, less powerful hardware. Not only would this reduce the frequency of obsolescence, it would reduce waste. Many of the digital devices that have been discarded in the last few years could have been repurposed. Heck, just using something other than Windows as the operating system can breath new life into a computer.