Raspberry Pi

Long-term owners

they're the only SBC board (not x86 baed) that you're guaranteed will have at least some software support after 5+ years

Aug 2026 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• Raspberry Pi ZeroPeople recommend it for low power draw, low cost, wifi, GPIO and a large body of online information. Critics point to limited I/O ports and scarce stock.77recommend
• NVIDIA JetsonRecommended for running AI models and robotics on a small, low-power board with strong GPU performance, though critics say software support is short and poorly maintained.28recommend
• Orange Pi 6 PlusPeople recommend it for strong multicore CPU performance, large RAM and fast I/O for an ARM board. Critics agree its driver and kernel support lags, so it suits SBC tinkerers.18recommend
• Raspberry Pi 2Long-lived board that people run unattended for years; the older model still gives good value, though one critic found it struggled with heavy workloads.12recommend
• SpacemiT K3Fast enough for everyday desktop use, with RVA23 vector support and strong multi-core speed. Critics say it costs too much for what it delivers.12recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 926 comments. Each links to the original.

1. The recommended software, derived from Debian, and the default configuration of that software is what causes the SD card corruption, not the RPi development board

   Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “The death and rebirth of my home server”

2. Other boards like the Raspberry Pi and many boards based on Rockchip SoCs have most of the necessary support mainlined, so the experience is quite painless.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “OrangePi 6 Plus Review: The New Frontier for ARM64 SBC Performance”

3. They're relatively common in industrial applications now because they have really good software support and great long-term availability.

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350”

4. They've never been particularly low-power, in a performance-per-Watt sort of way compared to other offerings at whatever present day.

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development – Jeff Geerling”

5. That's really the magic of the Pi. You can keep one gizmo around, and use it to solve (a large fraction of) two classes of problems.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development – Jeff Geerling”

6. compiling the software, but also simply apt upgrade feels like it takes forever. Most day to day operations work just fine though.

   Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises”

7. you can either spend an insane amount of time getting things working on your custom SBC, or get something well-supported for free

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “I don’t need a Steam Machine”

8. you know for sure there won't be any major Linux issues; the official distro is tested for that hardware and that hardware alone

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “I don’t need a Steam Machine”

9. I was tinkering with a kit, but I moped into a Linux User Group meeting, complaining how often I'd ruined an sdcard filesystem

   Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “How to Increase OpenBSDs Resilience to Power Outages”

10. they're the only SBC board (not x86 baed) that you're guaranteed will have at least some software support after 5+ years

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “A 3rd World Embedded Engineer Responds to "RISC-V They Should Have Known Better"”

11. you know you'll have software support, and you know that the vendor will be making the exact thing you bought for 5-10y

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development – Jeff Geerling”

12. Being able to boot into a Linux system without having to dig through outdated wikis and Chinese language support forums

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi's New AI Hat Adds 8GB of RAM for Local LLMs”

13. They're interesting precisely because they can do what a microcontroller can do, while still being a full Linux system.

    Recommends · Nov 2025

14. Other boards like the Raspberry Pi and many boards based on Rockchip SoCs have most of the necessary support mainlined

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “OrangePi 6 Plus Review: The New Frontier for ARM64 SBC Performance”

15. I could go with a cheaper alternative, but then AFAIK you might have to fiddle with images, kernel and documentation.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi's New AI Hat Adds 8GB of RAM for Local LLMs”

16. This is also how I feel about Raspberry Pis. There's so much they can't do, and yet in a way they can do everything.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “"This Is Not the Computer for You"”

17. Something that needs to be light and runs on a traditional navigation stack (no AI) would be served well by an RPI.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “The Raspberry Pi Interactive Timeline · 2006–2026”

18. it was small but powerful for the size, it was low power, it was extremely flexible, it had great software support

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi's New AI Hat Adds 8GB of RAM for Local LLMs”

19. The Pi 5 is decently powerful, but you really really should not be attempting to use one as a desktop replacement.

    Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market”

20. something has gone dreadfully wrong in the economy when individual 8GB+ raspberry pi are now costing $200 to $300

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “The Raspberry Pi Interactive Timeline · 2006–2026”

21. they still serve the same purpose as the original for weird headless tasks like eyeballing a furnace needle gauge

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “The Raspberry Pi Interactive Timeline · 2006–2026”

22. they still serve the same purpose as the original for weird headless tasks

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “The Raspberry Pi Interactive Timeline · 2006–2026”

23. The performance per watt lagged behind even a beefy Intel box since the original Raspi was so slow that it destroyed any gain it got from using so little power.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development – Jeff Geerling”

24. Raspberry Pi hasn't been a cheap SBC for a long time. It's now in the same market segment as a NUC, but without the case and with worse price to performance.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Apple's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes, a quiet acknowledgment of the RAM shortage”

25. with where they've taken pricing and as you said, where the market has gone, they've become all but irrelevant in that space

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Price Increases for 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5”

26. That leaves $100 for everything else on the Pi, including the hardware, building it, transporting it, and retailer margin.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350”

27. raspberry pi has terrible power management as well. turning off a core was impossible on previous generations for example

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development – Jeff Geerling”

28. Websites even with a simple animation are laggy, startup takes a few minutes.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises”

29. My Raspberry PI with Linux which probably eats 10 of those Amiga 2Ks for breakfast shifts through through a few 1000 lines of initialising output

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “We built a cloud GPU notebook that boots in seconds”

30. I found the Pi 4B to be the sweet spot for me, because it is the earliest model to support USB booting, gigabit Ethernet, and offer > 1GB RAM.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development – Jeff Geerling”

31. The 1GB of RAM on it is totally adequate to snap photos, encode them into my choice of formats and send them somewhere on a periodic schedule.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “The Raspberry Pi Interactive Timeline · 2006–2026”

32. I just bought a RPI5 and was curious if this was a mistake, but after watching the whole 'I love PI' video, I am still okay with my choice.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “RTX 5090 and Raspberry Pi: Can It Game?”

33. My router has a huge advantage here in that it's a Raspberry Pi 4, so it's easy to remove/replace/re-do the flash device and start over.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router”

34. some regular pi's left in industrial cabinets for one-off emergency monitoring purposes have managed to stay annoyingly alive over time

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief”

35. the massive community of people around these products have libraries and tutorials that can be leveraged to reduce development time

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350”

36. Including but not limited to dual gigabit Ethernet (on a PCIe bus), NVMe slots, and a capable power supply is included in the box.

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350”

37. It's a good fit if there is a need for the GPIOs/Linux/Display, for anything else, there are way better products out there.

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development – Jeff Geerling”

38. It's kind of the last one they made that does what I kind of expected out of a Raspberry Pi at a reasonable price point.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi's New AI Hat Adds 8GB of RAM for Local LLMs”

39. The Pi5 has enough CPU power, so even the H264 decoding itself now uses software as it no longer has a hardware decoder.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison”

40. there isn't a reason to go that route if you want to see everyone's calendar color-coded while also saving a few bucks

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard”