Hi,
My current Thinkpad is dying and I was wondering if the Raspberry Pi 4-B
8GB would be a half-decent laptop replacement, obviously with the
addition of a portable monitor (suggestions?) and an external drive.
I can only stress "half decent"; I don't expect miracles.
I would be running NetBSD [1], not Raspbian.
I don't really do gaming or other CPU intensive tasks, but I do some
word processing every now and again and I'd like to build my own
packages from pkgsrc.
"Ottavio Caruso" <ottavio2006-usenet2012@yahoo.com> wrote
| My current Thinkpad is dying and I was wondering if the Raspberry Pi 4-B
| 8GB would be a half-decent laptop replacement, obviously with the
| addition of a portable monitor (suggestions?) and an external drive.
|
I find it perfectly usable running it through a TV
screen with wireless keyboard/mouse on a tray,
while I sit on the sofa. Doing the same with a monitor
would work just as well. Firefox and Thunderbird seem
to work fine.
The biggest issue to my mind is that it's an ARM
CPU. That means any other common software probably
won't work. Word processing? OK. But printing? I
don't know. Image editing? I doubt it. ARM is mostly
used for limited service-type devices like phones and
tablets.
My current Thinkpad is dying and I was wondering if the Raspberry Pi 4-B
8GB would be a half-decent laptop replacement, obviously with the
addition of a portable monitor (suggestions?) and an external drive.
I can only stress "half decent"; I don't expect miracles.
I would be running NetBSD [1], not Raspbian.
I don't really do gaming or other CPU intensive tasks, but I do some
word processing every now and again and I'd like to build my own
packages from pkgsrc.
I'm getting disillusioned with newer Thinkpads and the old ones are just
too old.
Thanks
[1] https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/aarch64/
The biggest issue to my mind is that it's an ARM
CPU. That means any other common software probably
won't work. Word processing? OK. But printing? I
don't know. Image editing? I doubt it. ARM is mostly
used for limited service-type devices like phones and
tablets.
So far, I can do everything on my 8GB Pi4B that I can on my Linux based
Intel desktop. The full range of opensource software is available - for
image editing gimp, darktable etc. The QGIS mapping software works fine
- better, because the Pi4 had more memory than my desktop. I'll be investigating video editing soon, but the opensource applications should work. My own software just recompiles and runs.
Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> wrote:
So far, I can do everything on my 8GB Pi4B that I can on my Linux based
Intel desktop. The full range of opensource software is available - for
image editing gimp, darktable etc. The QGIS mapping software works fine
- better, because the Pi4 had more memory than my desktop. I'll be
investigating video editing soon, but the opensource applications should
work. My own software just recompiles and runs.
Comparison of video editing capabilities of a RPi 4, Odroid N2 and Jetson >Nano: https://youtu.be/NRsXiRcaItk
Kdenlive seems to run quite well.
Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> wrote:
So far, I can do everything on my 8GB Pi4B that I can on my Linux based
Intel desktop. The full range of opensource software is available - for
image editing gimp, darktable etc. The QGIS mapping software works fine
- better, because the Pi4 had more memory than my desktop. I'll be
investigating video editing soon, but the opensource applications should
work. My own software just recompiles and runs.
Comparison of video editing capabilities of a RPi 4, Odroid N2 and Jetson Nano: https://youtu.be/NRsXiRcaItk
Kdenlive seems to run quite well.
My current Thinkpad is dying and I was wondering if the Raspberry Pi 4-B
8GB would be a half-decent laptop replacement, obviously with the
addition of a portable monitor (suggestions?) and an external drive.
On 23/08/2020 21:50, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
My OP:
My current Thinkpad is dying and I was wondering if the Raspberry Pi 4-B
8GB would be a half-decent laptop replacement, obviously with the
addition of a portable monitor (suggestions?) and an external drive.
Thank you all for the input.
I just wanted to point out that my choice would go for NetBSD because,
it seems, NetBSD can use all the 8GM RAM, while other OSes, including Raspbian, can only use 3GB RAM. I haven't really looked into details of
why this happens, but I suspect it has to do with NetBSD using the Pi in
real 64bit mode, while Raspbian running in 32-bit mode, both in kernel-
and user-land. I could be wrong. I've asked around but I didn't get much feedback; maybe you could help.
On 2020-08-25, Ottavio Caruso <ottavio2006-usenet2012@yahoo.com> wrote:
On 23/08/2020 21:50, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
My OP:
My current Thinkpad is dying and I was wondering if the Raspberry Pi 4-B >>> 8GB would be a half-decent laptop replacement, obviously with the
addition of a portable monitor (suggestions?) and an external drive.
Thank you all for the input.
I just wanted to point out that my choice would go for NetBSD because,
it seems, NetBSD can use all the 8GM RAM, while other OSes, including
Raspbian, can only use 3GB RAM. I haven't really looked into details of
why this happens, but I suspect it has to do with NetBSD using the Pi in
real 64bit mode, while Raspbian running in 32-bit mode, both in kernel-
and user-land. I could be wrong. I've asked around but I didn't get much
feedback; maybe you could help.
Not true. 32bit RaspberryPI OS can use all the memory, but each process
is limited, basically to 2GB(*). So if you need more for one process then
you will need a 64bit OS. They are working on a 64bit version of
RapberryPI OS, but I am not sure what stage it is at.
Jim
(*) 3GB with some voodoo which I don't understand :-)
Not true. 32bit RaspberryPI OS can use all the memory, but each process
is limited, basically to 2GB(*). So if you need more for one process then
you will need a 64bit OS. They are working on a 64bit version of
RapberryPI OS, but I am not sure what stage it is at.
Jim
(*) 3GB with some voodoo which I don't understand :-)
Beta 64-bit installed and working without issue on one 4 GB RPi card here. https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=275370
They removed MMAL in an update
David Taylor <david-taylor@blueyonder.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
Beta 64-bit installed and working without issue on one 4 GB RPi card here. https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=275370
No hardware gpu acceleration, yet, so graphical desktop and browser
probably quite slow, certainly for video. They removed MMAL in an update because it threw errors, which for some reason made VNC Server unable to
run. Also no Mathematica.
("MMAL (Multimedia Abstraction Layer) is a C library designed by Broadcom
for use with the Videocore IV GPU found on the Raspberry Pi. Providing an abstraction layer upon another C library "OpenMAX", MMAL exposes an API allowing developers to take images and record video from their Raspberry Pi which is easier to understand and consume.")
Not true. 32bit RaspberryPI OS can use all the memory, but each process
is limited, basically to 2GB(*). So if you need more for one process then
you will need a 64bit OS. They are working on a 64bit version of
RapberryPI OS, but I am not sure what stage it is at.
(*) 3GB with some voodoo which I don't understand :-)
It's not 2-3 but 3-4 on the Pi (like he wrote in a follow-up) and the
reason is not signed integers but a hardware bug of some sort. Can't be bothered to google up the details, sorry :)
I understand how Windows does it, but not Linux. The actual (32-bit unsigned integer) address space is 4GB. Normal Windows splits that into 2GB for the executing program itself, and 2GB for shared system files (DLLs). There is a boot-time setting and compiler/linker options meant for server computers with sets it to 3GB executing program and 1GB for the shared
system files (Servers are expected to have few actual ad-hoc programs running, so few strange DLLs, but the application will have lots of data
and threads). The 2GB limit for file size on Windows is more a result of so many applications using signed integer logic (especially Java -- no
unsigned at all) so it is difficult to seek/address records beyond the 2GB limit.
A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:
It's not 2-3 but 3-4 on the Pi (like he wrote in a follow-up) and the
reason is not signed integers but a hardware bug of some sort. Can't be
bothered to google up the details, sorry :)
Hm, maybe not a hardware bug (or SoC limitation), I was sure I read that >somewhere though. Could be like this: >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_barrier
Are you sure you need that? I'm writing this on Windows
XP 32-bit. I run image editing, RAW editing, Visual Studio 6,
Libre Office, sometimes Avidemux, a video player, and various
other things. After feeding the graphics I end up with about 3
GB RAM. I almost never get anywhere close to using it. The
only situation where it might show a difference would be
with video editing or extremely large image editing. From your
initial description it's hard to imagine where you might need so
much RAM.
On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 09:27:01 -0000 (UTC), Jim Jackson
<jj@franjam.org.uk> declaimed the following:
Not true. 32bit RaspberryPI OS can use all the memory, but each
process is limited, basically to 2GB(*). So if you need more for one
process then you will need a 64bit OS. They are working on a 64bit
version of RapberryPI OS, but I am not sure what stage it is at.
There had been a link (which I can't find) to a 64-bit release
of the May 27 build, file name => 2020-05-27-raspios-buster-arm64.zip
(so not a NOOBS installer). I haven't had the nerve to try configuring
it (I've gotten used to doing NOOBS installs of Debian).
**** just did a quick Google: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=275370
Not true. 32bit RaspberryPI OS can use all the memory, but each process
is limited, basically to 2GB(*). So if you need more for one process then
you will need a 64bit OS. They are working on a 64bit version of
RapberryPI OS, but I am not sure what stage it is at.
I'm curious how much RPi4 uses. I'm assuming it's far more
lean than even XP.
On 23/08/2020 21:50, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
My current Thinkpad is dying and I was wondering if the Raspberry Pi 4-B
8GB would be a half-decent laptop replacement, obviously with the
addition of a portable monitor (suggestions?) and an external drive.
I just wanted to point out that my choice would go for NetBSD because,
it seems, NetBSD can use all the 8GM RAM, while other OSes, including >Raspbian, can only use 3GB RAM.
Sysop: | Keyop |
---|---|
Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
Users: | 285 |
Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
Uptime: | 65:52:55 |
Calls: | 6,488 |
Calls today: | 1 |
Files: | 12,096 |
Messages: | 5,275,047 |