raspbery pi and hardware alternative

[francois]

Having a small sailboat, I became interested into the raspberry pi. The reason is that the pi is a great and cheap alternative to to main boating systems which will rip your pants off. Additionally there has been great development of opensource software for boating opencpn.
https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f1 ... 48038.html

Why am I writing this on the porteus forum, simply because I would like us to share our experience with minimalist computers like the raspberry pi, and the like. Personally, I have got two raspberry pi, on which I am still working.

There are raspberry pi alternatives that runs with linux or porteus.
https://www.the-diy-life.com/raspberry- ... t-for-you/
The idea of working with a linux compatible version of the pi is from fanthom. Personally, I regret deeply to not have followed his advice at the time.

The great advantage with these linux hardware alternatives is that you don't need to work with an ARM version. Which we do not have no more here on porteus since the departure of jssouza:
Porteus 3.2 for Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 (armhf)
jssouza arm version is porteus 3.2, and has not been updated.

I will come back with more information.

This information is peculiarly for you Jack.

[Jack]

Thanks for the link and I was looking at is https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid- ... yte-ram-2/ I want to it out.

I found it on eBay and I might get it soon.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/255046498439?_ ... R8yF_NecZQ

[francois]

@It looks good.

Please know that it is possible to boot the pi on external RAM to improve its speed:
***hyperlink to come ***
Locigally, this must be also an option for Pi alternatives.

I have added a link to opencpn opensource ARM system for raspberry pi in the first post.

[vinnie]

As I said in the other post, I would like to have a sbc with a linux that consumes little power, but I would like it to be opensource, for that I was intrigued by the visionfive 2 whic needs only a blob for graphics acceleration, if one needs it.

I had a raspberry 2 if I remember correctly, I used it attached behind a television so that it was invisible.
@francois, of the alternative list you passed the one I was most interested in was librecomputer's “le potato” because from what I read it runs on the linux kernel without having to make any modifications and plus instead of wifi/bluetooth it has infrared!

[francois]

This seem to be a good linux contender at first glance:
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/ ... -pi-rp2040
https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry- ... -x4-review

On amazon
https://www.amazon.com/High-Performance ... 5FJTK?th=1

Other Pi alternative


Jack please make sure this is a good fit. I don't understsand your VGA screen issue. Some of these pi alternatives come with heatsink. It seems that you will have to buy the power supply separately.

[francois]

@jack:
It seems there is a VGA to HDMI adaptor:
https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Connecti ... RKD4H?th=1

So you will be able to keep your old screen.

@vinnie:
Thanks for your impressions. My son wants my asus laptop which is virtual reality able. I did not want to spend too much, so it was hard for me to let it go. These linux alternatives seem very cheap and attractive.

[vinnie]

what do you mean by "virtual reality able"?

anyway the "le potato" card should be an arm card, so I don't think porteus can work on it.

Instead the raxda that you mentioned should be an x86, but in the video it said it cost 40 dollars while on amazon it's 120...

I didn't think vgi to hdmi adapters existed! are you sure that he don't need instead an hdmi to vgi similar to this? (i have a cable like this for old monitor)

[francois]

VR able: It can support an Oculus rift.

[francois]

I changed the link on raspberry pi alternatives in the first post, they were arm machines. Instead I have put a compariron between the pi and a N100 (intel x86 machine).

[vinnie]

I was reminded of this, try to take a look at it: https://www.zimaspace.com/products/blade-personal-nas

edit. seems worst thank raxda for performance

[nanZor]

I kind of went through this a few years ago. Have a few Pi's and even the LePotato. Ran the LePotato with Armbian. Fun.

But I never really hardware hacked with them, controlling circuitry and so forth. And of course the higher powered versions Pi 4/5/400/500 etc... Cool.

But the pull for Porteus is strong with this one.

That's when my pile of cheap mini-pc's ($100 range) started growing. In fact, I pulled an older Bmax B1 Plus (poky Celeron N3350) and am writing on it now with Porteus 5.1 Alpha XFCE. Fortunately, 5.1 Alpha finds the pesky audio sof-essx8336 just fine, whereas some distros do not. For headphones previous to Alpha, I simply used a usb<>headphone dsp dongle to bypass the internals, and run that way. No dongle needed with Alpha!

Turn off the compositor in XFCE and this thing is usable within reason. Fun!

[vinnie]

Two days ago I found this:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/SOM/NXP ... e-hardware
https://www.olimex.com/Products/SOM/NXP ... e-hardware

I think I want to buy it so I would like a port of porteus (or rather nemesis, armtix already exist, artix version for arm).
I've never done any of this but how do you make a port?

Ran the LePotato with Armbian. Fun

le potato was another one of the boards that was interesting to me, does it not require any special arrangements to work?

Turn off the compositor in XFCE and this thing is usable within reason. Fun!

Someone suggests to use picom instead of xfwm4 as a compositor, I have to try too

[nanZor]

Hi Vinnie! Heh, you got me into a Porteus project on my mini-pc booting from an micro sd-card from my PI days...

I would say be sure to check out the Armbian forum community before making any purchase if you go this route since they have dedicated board threads and such:
https://forum.armbian.com/

AND, these guys got me into the micro-sd / sd card thing too. Notably, any card that I put into service gets a reformat and "touched" at least once by the SD-Card association formatter. There's a whole story behind that, and the gist of it is that since they wrote the spec, this formatter - at least ONCE - assures proper operation because they, um - can do "stuff" internally that windows/linux/mac can't touch. At least once. Many poo-poo this advice, but I follow it with a spare windows box. It isn't just a way to fix counterfeit cards! I use it on good ones at least once out of the box.

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

And, sometimes for USB sticks, I'll run this windows freebie:
https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm

Just sayin - this stuff is there, one doesn't have to use it. For me, no politics to Porteus!

[nanZor]

Oops, forgot - yeah the compositor thing is the usual bag of tricks of first things to try on a slow box. But XFCE's own compositor is fine actually for me.

I re-enabled it. I had come from a high-end environment, had an energy drink, and an entire box of tim-tam cookies under my belt. I mentally shifted gears appropriate to the fanless low-power box, and all is good now.

[vinnie]

I like the xfce compositor too, I only miss one function, the negative of the colors of a single window, otherwise for what I use it, it is ok