
I Replaced My MacBook Pro with a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB for a Day - geerlingguy
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/i-replaced-my-macbook-pro-raspberry-pi-4-8gb-day
======
cannam
Although not wrong, and full of interesting details, this is a really puzzling
article. It feels a little like writing about how you couldn't get your
toaster to boil noodles. (Though not as unsafe.)

I use Linux as my main desktop and have always found it very pleasant, but if
my main thing was video editing, I wouldn't try to do it with Linux on ARM64
and then grumble when it turned out not to work very well.

(Of course what makes the article worth reading is the fact that its author
has tried just that, and reported on it. It's an interesting report! It's
simply odd that the article seems so disappointed, since surely few readers
would have expected any other result.)

~~~
cztomsik
In my experience, linux is (unfortunately) only good for running server apps.
Ubuntu is good but it's still like 20ys in the past when compared to macos
(and that's including how macos gets worse with every new release). There are
so many things wrong or half-finished, inconsistent (3 ways to copy/paste, no
native GUI fw/toolkit, vsync/video/browser tearing), I'm afraid to install
updates because sometimes it won't boot up and I'll need to figure out what
went wrong this time (instead of doing what I wanted). Linux ppl like to say
it's because of HW but no, it's because they don't care or they have different
goals but then I don't understand why the same people often don't understand
why linux is not more widespread.

If you want to get job done, get a mac, it's still the best choice
(unfortunately, I don't like it but it's the least evil - W7 was good too but
W10 spy/adware is ew)

~~~
sys_64738
Take Linux Mint Cinnamon for a spin. I think it'll change your perspective for
Linux on the desktop. Browsers like Vivaldi make a consistent experience
across all three OS platforms.

~~~
tuatoru
I use Mint; have done for ... eight? years after I got fed up with incessantly
gardening Arch. (Too high maintenance to be my friend, I decided after 6
years.)

Recently I had to start using windows 10. On Microsoft's own hardware. Oy vey.

I doubt that someone who likes Mac OS will like Mint, but it's definitely a
better Windows than Windows. Comfortable rather than stylish, but without
jarring jumps to 30 year old UI styles at random times, or six different ways
to not quite do what you want. Or the surveillance.

If you don't like Mint, then try MX Linux or Manjaro.

~~~
cztomsik
Mint was one of the best distros, I've tried.

------
SloopJon
I'm not sure what the author's background is, but if he did all of this in one
day as a Mac-using Linux newbie, I'm actually pretty impressed. There are
references to previous posts about the Pi, but it's not clear whether he's
used Linux as a desktop O/S before.

I'm using Ubuntu on a 4 GB Pi for some Docker experiments, because I couldn't
get ARM64 images to work on Raspbian. Is Raspbian the best distribution for
the desktop, or is there something better for a 4 or 8 GB Pi?

~~~
mikepurvis
He's not all a newbie; among other things he maintains some well regarded
Ansible roles for things like deploying Jenkins.

~~~
geerlingguy
I’ve been using Linux on the server side exclusively for years and twice
before tried to switch to Ubuntu and Fedora (two separate times during Apple’s
butterfly-switch years).

So I do have some background but not a PhD in Linux in the Desktop.

What I’ve found is that if you’re mostly dealing with programming, dev work,
and maybe some more specialized graphics work (not just twiddling with artwork
and media using the computer as an artistic tool), almost any Linux desktop
may be entirely adequate.

But if you do like (somewhat more) consistent UIs and a deep catalog (more
than 2 in every category) of _very good_ apps, your much better off in
Mac/Windows :(

I’d like that to change but just like Fusion energy my excitement will not
make it happen any sooner than 20 years from now. (I could’ve said that same
thing the first time I tried Red Hat for my workstation (against Windows 3.1)
in like 1996...).

~~~
heavyset_go
> _But if you do like (somewhat more) consistent UIs and a deep catalog (more
> than 2 in every category) of very good apps, your much better off in Mac
> /Windows :(_

The flip side of this is that the skills and apps you learn in the open source
ecosystem have staying power.

I spent a lot of time learning to use old Photoshop versions pretty well, but
these days I don't have a subscription with Adobe, so those skills have been
lost to its walled garden.

However, I also spent a lot of time using GIMP during that period, and I can
still leverage that knowledge 15 years later for free.

~~~
cawlin
I doubt up to date GIMP has many more features than Photoshop CS2 which was a
pay once license :)

~~~
heavyset_go
I doubt it either, and I don't have CS2, unfortunately. However, GIMP gets the
job done for my purposes, and I'm not limited to an old binary version that
relies on components that will become increasingly deprecated with time.

edit: Ha, Adobe still has the download link for free Photoshop CS2 live.
Apparently it works in Wine, too.

For anyone who is wondering, Photoshop CS2 works well on Wine stable on Linux.
I'm going to be honest, CS2 and GIMP are pretty similar feature wise.

~~~
toyg
_> Photoshop CS2 works well on Wine stable on Linux_

But won't work on ARM, so it wouldn't work on Raspberry Pi 4. If Apple starts
a wave with its much-suggested move to ARM, CS2 will not survive but GIMP
likely will.

~~~
heavyset_go
Definitely agree. It also crashes on a HiDPI screen, can't handle SVG or WebP
and modern GIMP has more features.

------
vr46
Funnily enough, to avoid all the cables and mess, I simply plug my Pi 4/8Gb
straight into my iPad, then VNC or SSH into it, and instantly have a
development environment. I would have to use some kind of hub to charge the
iPad at the same time and plug an external monitor in, but the iPad Pro plus
Smart Keyboard plus a Pi works brilliantly. (Where's my cheque, Tim?)

~~~
jdminhbg
Can you expand on that? How do you plug your Pi into the iPad, just a simple
USB cable? Do you use an app for VNC/SSH?

~~~
vr46
Yup, I had to go through a couple of USB-C cables before I found a working
combo (See Pi 4 USB-C woes elsewhere, since fixed) but that was it. I use
Blink for SSH/Mosh and VNC Viewer - Remote Desktop.

I also used this link to help me get set up:
[https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-
gad...](https://www.hardill.me.uk/wordpress/2019/11/02/pi4-usb-c-gadget/)

~~~
jdminhbg
Awesome, thanks for the pointers.

------
andolanra
I'm not sure why the conclusion is, "Linux on the Desktop isn't possible,"
when the big blocker the author had was pretty consistently finding and
installing software compatible with a small ARM64 machine. (That's not to say
it's not a valid conclusion to draw in general: just that it's a bit of a non-
sequitur for this article.)

~~~
geerlingguy
I didn’t say that. I said the fabled “year of the Linux desktop” is a long
ways off, in terms of being a potential option for the vast audience of users
who currently own a Mac or Windows computer.

~~~
wazoox
But the vast audience wouldn't use such an ARM64 machine for that and won't
have these problems. The audio problems for instance that you encountered with
all applications are obviously related to the hardware, not Linux. Even on my
weird desktop running slackware I run Zoom, Jit.si, Cheese, Skype, etc without
any problem.

It's precisely the other way around, I've seen several articles recently about
the fact that Linux adoption on the desktop has soared rapidly, and you see
Lenovo and Dell supporting Linux on a large number of machines nowadays.

The only thing you showed is that there is no desktop-grade ARM64 Linux
machine available.

~~~
IshKebab
> The audio problems for instance that you encountered with all applications
> are obviously related to the hardware, not Linux.

When people say "Linux on the desktop" they mean "Linux on _most common
desktop hardware_ ". They don't mean "Linux but only on one carefully tested
machine".

A Logitech C920 especially is very common and uses standard USB audio, so it
_should_ work. The fact that it doesn't could feasibly be a firmware bug that
happens to work on Windows for some reason, but given how janky Linux audio is
in general, I think it is almost certainly a bug in Linux (or PulseAudio or
whatever if you're going to get nitpicky).

~~~
geerlingguy
The problem I had was “it works sometimes, and in some ways, but not other
times”.

And as a developer, inconsistent behavior in any system means chaos and
something I can’t depend on to get my work done.

This is not a problem exclusive to Linux on the Pi. While much less of an
issue, I have had strange driver problems when I tried working from both
Ubuntu and Fedora on my Dell XPS 13.

On the Mac, or on Windows on the PC, at least the random weird behaviors (like
random crash if I open this, change that, open this, and then use two
different audio interfaces) are consistent, so I can usually adapt my workflow
to avoid them.

~~~
alxlu
Out of curiosity, what driver problems did you run into? I switched my primary
laptop to an XPS 13 a few months ago after almost exclusively using MacBook
Pros for over a decade and I haven’t run into a single driver issue. Even the
usual suspend issues I seem to have with almost every single Linux desktop I
build didn’t show up.

If anything, I feel like I ran into less issues overall on the XPS 13 than I
did in macOS once I had everything set up properly. That being said I suspect
part of it is due to having a very minimal setup. I have no DE, no DM, a
lightweight WM (dwm), etc. so there are fewer moving parts that can cause a
crash (in addition to a much more responsive feeling UI on cheaper/slower
hardware).

------
AdmiralAsshat
Shocker: A $75 multi-purpose device could not adequately replace his dedicated
$1500 device.

I don't know what this was intended to prove, exactly?

~~~
avip
(̶4̶5̶$̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶l̶u̶d̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶)̶

Edit: wrong price quoted for the 2GB model.

~~~
penagwin
That's the 2GB model

------
trynewideas
While I get that he wants things to Just Work for things the Pi's not designed
to do, that's not the goal or design of the Pi in any sense whatsoever. The
hypothesis that a Pi would be feasible for his workflow was set up to fail
before he started doing anything.

------
ViViDboarder
A Linux desktop is far less “painful” when it’s on an equivalently powered
device as you are used to. I wouldn’t plug a monitor into an iPhone and claim
Apple desktops are painful.

The real takeaway to me is “ARM desktops are a few years away”.

~~~
rcarmo
Actually, you'd probably find the iPhone outperforms your current laptop
(Assuming average 2y-old laptop). It just doesn't have the same UX, or the
ability to run desktop apps.

~~~
ValentineC
I think they're suitable for different tasks.

I prefer an iPhone myself for consuming the web and social media, but I
wouldn't use it for development work, or running anything computationally-
intensive.

------
Havoc
Title seems a little cringey.

The 8GB model isn't going to perform much better on these tasks that the 4GB
on that has been available forever and the $75 device is not a suitable
replacement for a $1,299 device.

I do use Jeff's work to determine what SD card to buy...but the above has
rattled my confidence a bit.

~~~
Avicebron
The title is classic click bait, looks like he's good at it since right below
it he has a youtube video of the project. It's probably a hustle for some
views/ad revenue and not meant to be a serious project where he legitimately
thinks he's building a mac in his room.

~~~
sukilot
At a penny for a thousand views, that doesn't seem a smart play.

~~~
Avicebron
I don't know his CPM, but a quick google search reveals the average (2018) CPM
to be $2.80. I agree not a lot, but hey, worth the passive income probably.

~~~
geerlingguy
It’s part of a bit of a wide reaching effort to make it possible for me to get
all my income from open source work and free ventures. I’m about 25% of the
way there.

And quick note on YouTube CPMs, they vary a lot by genre. Some of the more
popular genres are on the lower end of that spectrum (afaict, based on limited
testing).

It’s tough because I have a chronic illness and also support a family of five
(SAHM, but it seems all parents have been stay at home lately).

But as cringey as many in the HN audience may find it, marketing is actually
vital to any endeavors success.

I try to make it so my work is better than the title suggests, but don’t
always succeed.

I literally unplugged my MBP and replaced it with a Pi 4 for a day, but that
is apparently not literal enough to justify the title ;-)

~~~
Avicebron
Hey man, all the support to your family. I know the bait works and I respect
the hustle.

I won't criticize you for doing something that works and I like your goal,
I've been wanting to be 100% passive income open source for a long time.

------
eeZah7Ux
And yet many years ago I was using Debian on a laptop with 32MB of RAM. I was
using the "Awesome" lightweight desktop and spending 99% of the time in the
terminal.

SSH to work on remote servers, Vim for development, git, IRC, text email, man
and less for documentation (installed locally), rsync. Occasional browsing
with Dillo.

Believe me or not, I miss the productivity of not being forced to use tons of
stuff in browser.

~~~
teleforce
This. I'm not sure how many more years people will eventually realize that web
is originally invented for sharing documents over the decentralized internet
and not really suited for other type of applications. The proliferation of
app-over-web is really pushing it including the online web based video editing
[1]. Off course the online companies are loving the status quo since they can
sell us advertisements and perhaps our data as well in exchange for online
free software, or the dreaded "pay-forever" subscription based software.

I agree it's really convenient to go gung-ho all-web but how long can you
survive by continuously eating fast food diets?

With cheap off-the-shelf multi-core CPU (latest 64 cores/128 threads),
terabytes SSD, and terabytes RAM (including the new Optane non volatile
memory) the modern laptop/PC is even more powerful than twenty years ago
supercomputer [2]. I hope that native applications will make a comeback with
the increasing popularity of the compiled programming languages. The internet
and cloud are only being used for synchronizing and versioning the
application's data over multiple devices rather then online data processing
due to inherent limitations of remote bandwidth and latency that's not suited
for majority of desktop applications.

[1][https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/best-video-
editors/](https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/best-video-editors/)

[2][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Origin_2000](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Origin_2000)

------
sitkack
Most of this has to do with Linux and not the Pi itself. I use a mac and a
linux system side by side, desktop linux is still a tire fire. This is coming
from a person who used to run a FreeBSD laptop in the early 2000s.

~~~
proverbialbunny
Maybe it depends on what software you're using?

I use both OSX (MBP) and Linux Mint as my desktop. Everything I use works on
both. Both are stable and solid and work perfectly. I'm on a 4k60 monitor.

The only thing I had to do is have my graphics card do vsync on Linux.
Software vsync on Linux is horrible. GPU vsync has Linux runs smooth as butter
the same as smooth as OSX. I also had to manually increase my dpi and font
sizes to match my monitor.

~~~
sitkack
Do you have unified keyboard navigation inside of text editors across all
linux applications?

Can you reliably cut and paste between all applications?

Can you open the menu items with the keyboard?

It could be the applications, but I find to get the smooth OSX experience I
need to tweak every single application's preferences, many of which do not
have have the required level of control, then I need to resort to xmodmap,
etc, this is the path to ruin, rather than modify my system I have to modify
myself which hurts but I am ultimately more flexible than software.

I have come to the realization that the desktop OS you run doesn't matter, use
what works for you. I would absolutely love to run Libre software for
everything, but it isn't possible.

Maybe someone will create a window manager that also does live binary patching
and instrumentation, I am convinced that this is the only way, but by the time
that comes, everything will run in the browser anyway.

~~~
proverbialbunny
>Do you have unified keyboard navigation inside of text editors across all
linux applications?

yes

>Can you reliably cut and paste between all applications?

Of course.

>Can you open the menu items with the keyboard?

What, why?

The great thing about OSX is keybinds are standard between programs, so you
for all intents and purposes only need to learn one set of keybinds. Other OS'
are not as uniform but uniform enough to not cause problems too.

>I would absolutely love to run Libre software for everything, but it isn't
possible.

I have it and use it. I don't see the problem.

------
rvz
Well, I guess running all those favourite Electron apps simultaneously on the
Pi wouldn't be a wise thing to do since it would still grind to a slow and
painful halt.

I would just spare the Raspberry Pi from this Electron app stress testing
torture as it evidently cannot handle many of them running at the same time.

------
KingMachiavelli
Many of the issues and personal choices made where due to the jump between a
non-linux OS to a Linux OS.

Even though the 'default' desktop environment is light weight, a tiling WM
just as i3 or dwm would run perfectly on the Pi. Light weight application
alternatives such as qutebrowser (instead of Chrome) and Spacemacs (instead of
VSCode) would also make using a Pi a lot easier.

The lack of 4k@60Hz is pretty annoying altough it actually might not be
noticable with a tiling WM due to the lack of animations.

~~~
groby_b
Given that Macs (at least the good old trashcan) also can't do 4k@60Hz over
HDMI, that was the one comparison that struck me as somewhat unfair.

~~~
zdw
Not sure why you're being downvoted - the 2013 Mac Pro has an HDMI 1.4 port:
[https://support.apple.com/kb/SP697?locale=en_US](https://support.apple.com/kb/SP697?locale=en_US)

Which is only good for a 30Hz refresh rate at UHD 3840x2160 resolutions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_1.4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_1.4)

You could use adapters on the Thunderbolt ports to get 4k60 support on that
hardware.

~~~
groby_b
Yep. And I'm using those Tunderbolt ports for my daily work, but . (And, you
know, it's nice that you can drive a large amount of screens with the ports,
but I was specifically referring to the HDMI implementation)

And digging into the specs of the RBpi4, it seems the HDMI port actually
_does_ support 4kp60, which makes this whole thing even funnier :)

------
deathhand
This is immensely interesting to me. This is a developer who is familiar with
linux servers and infrastructure but in unaware of all the linux desktop
oddities that come with it.

~~~
avip
I'm "familiar with linux servers and infrastructure" and would have little
idea how to setup linux as my working env for things like editing video. Seems
completely orthogonal.

~~~
deathhand
You are familiar with libraries and dependencies then. You know that its a
very complicated mess of spaghetti. You also know that video editing is a very
high use of a computer. Even for profit companies like Adobe has trouble with
current hardware[1]

I get you wanted to write a blog article. Content creation is cool. I don't
think you get where computers and technology has come from and necessary where
its going. That Raspberry PI would be great for programming GPIO pins to
literally do anything for you. This is my favorite explanation of
technology[2] and honestly amazed that any of it works.

[1]- [https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/cc-2020-super-
la...](https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/cc-2020-super-
laggy/td-p/10720042?page=1) [2]- [http://bretthard.in/post/dizzying-but-
invisible-depth](http://bretthard.in/post/dizzying-but-invisible-depth)

------
mark_l_watson
When I first bought a RPi, I used it exclusively for writing and coding for
several days. Worked OK, so I was surprised about the whining in the article.

~~~
somehnguy
There is a big difference between working OK and working in a pleasant to use
manner.

Every time I've ever tried to use Linux as my daily driver it has worked OK.
But it has never been pleasant to use and as such I never stick with it for
too long.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I usually use a MacBook but I also use a beefed up System76 laptop with a good
GPU, i7, and double the memory. Things like large Haskell builds, anything
using TensorFlow, etc. runs so much faster than my MacBook there is no
comparison.

Everyone gets to choose their own setup, but to be honest, if I didn't like my
Apple Mac+Watch+iPhone+iPad interop so much, I would always use the much
faster Linux system. At my old job, I had the fastest current MacBook Pro
configuration and it was much slower than my System76 rig.

~~~
geerlingguy
If I could customize my Mac like I could with a PC build (mmm more cores in a
Threadripper without a $10K Mac Pro minimum...), I would definitely not be
using a laptop today :(

------
MintelIE
I've been using a Pi 4 4GB as a desktop for a couple months now. Considering
that my other main computer is an ancient Thinkpad, I don't feel hampered by
the speed. I used a Pi 3B for a desktop replacement for a while and while it
was fine with my typical use (emacs+mostly command line) "modern" browsing was
uncomfortably slow. It was perfectly capable of video playback in standard
formats but there are problem sites using codecs which are not supported by
the media decoder in the Pi. The situation with the Pi 4 is quite similar but
it's just about fast enough for Youtube now.

Most any school or office could switch to the Pi 4 seamlessly these days for
sure though.

------
ArtWomb
Related: Building a Raspberry Pi Cluster

[https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/build-a-raspberry-
pi-...](https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/build-a-raspberry-pi-cluster-
computer)

And: Raspberry Pi Vulkan Driver Makes Progress But Long Road Remains

[https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-
Pi...](https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi-Vulkan-
Summer-2020)

I had no idea til this week the RP4-B had dual 4k hdmi output. And I love the
idea of a cluster for testing microservices. But regarding graphics
performance I think I would opt for NVidia's Jetson Nano.

------
julianeon
If you have a teeny-tiny amount of money - like, $75, the cost of a Pi - and
you want to get the best work computer/laptop and developer experience you
can, for your buck - you'd be dumb to buy a Pi.

Instead, get a used laptop - say, a Thinkpad. Install Linux on it.

There you go: the best computer you can get, performance-wise, for $75.

------
varjag
Coming up next: AtTiny13 vs Dell PowerEdge.

------
sloshnmosh
It became “The year of the Linux desktop” for me when Windows10 came out.

I now use Linux for most everything.

I also have 2 MacBook Pros and a MacBook Air but I quickly get frustrated when
trying to do anything worthwhile on them and go back to my ancient business
class Dell running Linux. YMMV

~~~
rnotaro
You see, outside of programming, Windows 10 became my main OS when it
released.

Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.5 were really shitty in my opinon but Windows 10 "saved"
Microsoft for me.

I have an Edu/Business license and I absolutely love it. Group policies
allowed me to avoid all the "auto-updates while doing work" from the start. I
never had any issues with Windows 10.

------
Apofis
This is more of a comparison between MacOS and Linux than a Macbook and a Pi.

------
kvothe_
Next article: I replaced my car with Raspberry Pi... didn't work out.

hmmmmmmm.

------
abnry
On Ubuntu with an Intel processor I have been very happy with the app
ecosystem. I suspect if the Raspberry p Pi had an AMD or Intel chip it'd be
less painful.

~~~
lioeters
Your comment made me curious why ARM architecture was chosen for the Raspberry
Pi. The following from Wikipedia explained it:

> Processors that have a RISC architecture typically require fewer transistors
> than those with a complex instruction set computing (CISC) architecture
> (such as the x86 processors found in most personal computers), which
> improves cost, power consumption, and heat dissipation.

> These characteristics are desirable for light, portable, battery-powered
> devices — including smartphones, laptops and tablet computers, and other
> embedded systems — but are also useful for servers and desktops to some
> degree. For supercomputers, which consume large amounts of electricity, ARM
> is also a power-efficient solution.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture)

Power efficiency seems to be one of the big reasons why Macs will have ARM
processors.

> Current ARM processors are also often more power-efficient, which helps with
> battery life. Switching to ARM is expected to let Apple reduce its processor
> costs by 40 to 60 percent.

[https://www.bloomberg.com./news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-
ai...](https://www.bloomberg.com./news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aims-to-sell-
macs-with-its-own-chips-starting-in-2021)

~~~
hajile
It was a lot more basic than that. They already had contacts at Broadcom. When
a client orders N chips, you make some percentage more just in case something
happens with binning. Their deal to buy those excess chips got them a
sweetheart deal they couldn't have gotten without ordering millions of units
(they also couldn't have gotten it without contacts though).

Now they're big enough to make their own orders and even their own chip
designs and it's inertia because changing requires a lot of money for new
firmware and software changes. Changing would increase device cost for at
least a could of cycles.

On the x86 front, they're simply never going to get that good of a deal with
AMD or Intel.

------
jankotek
I would strugle the same way on macbook, never used this platform. Pi4 is
fairly nice desktop. I use it as a backup workstation while traveling.

------
war1025
Does anyone know how a Pi4 with 8gb ram would hold up compared to a six year
old mid-lower tier laptop?

It's something I've been curious about for a while and really just waiting for
the point where a RaspberryPi-type device is adequate for Facebook /
Hackernews / Youtube, which is essentially what I use a laptop for at home.

~~~
icecreammatt
I just got an 8GB one and it works well enough for YouTube and light browsing
but I couldn’t use it as a dedicated machine. Certainly is more snappy than
the older ones I have. Just visiting the YouTube home page seems to really be
pushing it though.

~~~
war1025
What I am hearing from this is that there are good odds the Pi5 will be a
suitable light-duty desktop replacement.

~~~
icecreammatt
Pretty much, I think it just needs a slightly faster CPU to handle loading
JavaScript heavy pages.

~~~
Narishma
By then the Javascript-heavy pages will probably be even heavier. You'll then
be waiting for the Raspberry Pi 6 to run them.

------
adamredwoods
I remember when people were trying to do day-to-day work on their smartphones,
then the iPad came out and they started to work on those, which eventually led
to the iPad Pro and Microsoft Surface Pro and now fully capable of doing day-
to-day work on it.

Keeping pushing the boundaries!

~~~
adarioble
With the slight difference that any of these boundaries pushers (never did)
cost $75. Not now not then.

------
Andys
Tangentially, I permanently replaced my Raspberry Pi with an x86 Upboard and
it is just so much nicer to use and not really that expensive, though there
are some high end models

[https://up-shop.org/](https://up-shop.org/)

------
ex3ndr
I didn't get what's wrong with H.264 since it present in every pi even on pi
zero.

~~~
geerlingguy
If you don’t add the right options to FFmpeg it can’t take advantage of the
CPU acceleration, I believe.

------
wltprgm
Since people are so disappointed with ARM64 video/audio
viewing/recording/editing applications, they should write their own and
contribute to Linux ARM64 and stop complaining

RISC V on FPGA sucks, I wouldn't use it either

------
ngcc_hk
The other article on Apple switch to arm might help. Those software on mac are
on arm. You have now some video editing software on ipad that works well. The
question is which is the next winter, AppleArm or ...

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mickw
If the author did all of this in one day as a OSX/Linux novice, hat's off!
Took me a good bit of playing around to get fluid using Linux for the first
time

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wysewun
I admire how knowledgeable Jeff is in different subject matters. Jeff is a
major contributor in the ansible community and very helpful to everyone.

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fortran77
Hey Jeff! I've been using your VirtualBox Centos builds/images for years. It's
nice to see the face behind the Box.

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osdoorp
I Replaced My MacBook Pro with a Cat for a Day

~~~
sloshnmosh
I tried that too but my cat had trouble interfacing with the mouse.

(Sorry)

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hidiegomariani
The only purpose I could see raspberry pi in, is as a development env where
you can ssh into and do work as a pure Linux kernel.

If I was to use an arm desktop full time it would be microsoft surface pro x
(although with its quirks) having much more support and apps

Also Apple is planning to move MacBook line to arm although time will tell
whether that will work out or not. In the meanwhile we might need to stick to
x86 architectures for a while

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libx
I feel the same pain. Sound is a problem in my x86_64 Linux. One of the sound
cards doesn't work anymore, don't know what happened. But if I pass it through
to a Windows virtual machine with virt-manager, it works!

So many problems for the desktop, that come almost day in day out that I'm
considering trying Haiku OS for the desktop. Just need something that works.

~~~
salawat
I have the feeling that between graphics and sound processing there is just a
dearth of material about how the underlying mechanisms that drive that portion
of computing actually work. At least, I haven't really the magic words to
represent "For God sake, what do I have to line up to make this stiff work"
yet.

It's front and center of this decades computing goals for me. To that end,
I've been looking into things like how X actually works, actually making use
of graphics processing hardware, and the like. If anyone has some good
reading, I'd love to know.

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rubatuga
The author is right, none of these problems exist on macOS, and if you want
the year of the Linux desktop to finally come, it will have to solve all of
the issues highlighted. The commenters aren't going to be there to defend the
true use-cases of "ARM Linux Desktop" to the end-user, so expect them to be
completely turned off by this experience.

~~~
wazoox
None of these problems exist on my XPS running Ubuntu, either. Of course when
going to a 75$ not-desktop-grade machine from a $1500 Mac you'll find some
compromises along the way. That comment doesn't make the slightest sense,
frankly.

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pbreit
I thought this $120 tablet + keyboard looked interesting but wondering if 2GB
of RAM is going to cut it?

[https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-
tablet-...](https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinetab-10-1-linux-tablet-with-
detached-backlit-keyboard)

~~~
megameter
A fast SSD does wonders for making lower memory machines feel responsive. I do
useful work on a 4GB machine running Win10. There is lag when web browsing,
but it's easy to adjust to.

That said, it won't cut it if your applications actually do need more than 2GB
at a time. And the Pine device doesn't list support for SATA or M.2 either, so
you can't count on the SSD being a screamer.

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skykooler
I'm amazed that, given how long video editors have been around, there isn't
something better than OpenShot or Kdenlive; I would have expected that someone
would be working on the video equivalent of Gimp/Audacity/etc.

~~~
tartoran
Did you try ShotCut?

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kevinsimper
Don't the Raspberry Pi 4 support 4kp60?

~~~
Narishma
I think it does but only on 1 monitor.

~~~
geerlingguy
Correct, you need to toggle a setting in the boot config, and your HDMI cable
and monitor both have to support HDMI 2.0

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sitzkrieg
great choice for those looking to waste time

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hofstee
I can't even get WiFi working on my Pi 4. I can only resolve IPv6, anything
IPv4 fails. I suspect it's a router issue but I have no control over that, so
I simply can't use the Pi.

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adarioble
With Windows practically giving licenses away, Apple coming with MacOS, cheap
chromebooks coming with chromeOS, I really don’t get this “Linux on a desktop
move”, especially when it is $75 device + $250 of accessories.

That said I love Pi, have it for home automation and media server, amazing
piece of tech, NOT a desktop replacement and for the most part it’s not even
aiming at that.

~~~
0x0
Where can I get a free Windows license for my Macbook?

~~~
saagarjha
Anecdotally, I've found you don't really need one if you're fine with a nag in
the bottom right corner.

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paines
Cool write up/experiment, and I can feel the pain with Linux and Sound issues.
A few days ago I had a job interview and they used MS Teams. At first I was
completly blown aways that there is a native linux app. For the first 5
minutes I tried to get sound input working but gave up. Luckily once you press
the invite link, you can also choose to join via browser, and then sound input
worked directly as expected.

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dhosek
>But, sadly, I don't think this year is the 'Year of the Linux desktop'. In
general, I think 'Linux on the Desktop' for a mainstream audience is always
going to be 20 years away, just like nuclear fusion.

Yep. I know there are people who do Linux on the Desktop, but they're people
with a lot more tolerance for day-to-day pain than me. I had a job about a
decade ago where I had a linux desktop machine as my day-to-day working
environment and it was a miserable experience. There just doesn't seem to be
the will to make things otherwise.

~~~
Cerium
Things have changed a lot. Over the last year the company I work for has
transitioned a couple hundred developers from Windows desktops to Linux
desktops and it has been surprisingly smooth. Much better than an experiment I
ran myself a number of years prior.

~~~
adarioble
I have seen a fair amount of successful transitions. My company develops open
source software and our development team is on Linux/Mac. Works a treat.
Sales/Marketing/etc - Windows mostly with some more adventurous users using
Mac. Linux is still not there yet, for an end-user overall nice experience.

