Rob Braxman says “time to dump the Raspberry Pi” – but where are the alternatives for our application?

Last Updated on September 13, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

The Raspberry Pi 5 will eventually only be available in mid 2024. And that after we suffered so long from the Pi shortage? We are not the only ones who suffered.

Swiss YouTube video maker Andreas Spiess found alternatives and said goodbye to the Pi’s:

But the devices Andreas Spiess introduced are not suitable for our application, since our application is a mobile.

Rob Braxman, Internet Privacy Guy, public interest hacker and technologist says it is time to dump the raspberry Pi:

Intel NUCs run Linux very well, which of the SBCs we reviewed in our journal offers that? Unfortunately, Intel NUCs are to big for our application either. A Raspberry Pi is not worth 200 USD says Rob Braxman. The Pi has come down to around 80 to 120 USD in Switzerland, it is available used on Ricardo Switzerland where it is on stock.

The flagship of Raspberry the Pi 4 cannot compete with the devices Rob Braxman introduces in his video as far as performance is concerned. The Pi 4 was introduced in June 2019. We have now four years later. Rob Braxman says it is time to dump the Raspberry Pi 4 and find a better device. ExplainingComputers cannot convince us to use the Raspberry Pi 4 as our daily driver with desktop performance, altough he showed us that he can use the Pi 4 as his daily driver for a week. We can use the Pi 4 as our daily driver as well, that is our experience, but only if we have a lot of time and a lot of patience, but we haven’t. Rob Braxman says, it is time to retire the Raspberry Pi concept. But which are the altenatives for our application?

The Orange Pi 5 is small, powerful and available. If you wanna choose the Orange Pi 5, go for it, it has the newer technology than the Pi 4. But read first our journal about it. Will we not change our mind about this topic? We found a lot of issues with the Orange Pi 5, as for instance with WIFI support with a lot of different unofficial WIFI modules which are eventually better than the official ones. And with Bluetooth support as well and the many distros which are available for the Orange Pi 5. And number of applications which are confirmed to run on it. And most we miss a community of happy users of the Orange Pi 5 who report about their projects with the Orange Pi 5.

The Orange Pi 5 is far advanced to the Pi 4 as far as technology is concerned. But where is the software and the community for the Orange Pi 5 which can compete with the Pi’s?

The small form factor and the power of the Orange Pi 5 is great, and it is available. But as far as the other features are concerned, we are asking the question: is the Orange Pi 5 really an alternative for people who do not want to wait for the Raspberry PI 5 to come out? We where looking for such an alternative, but we still haven’t found what we are looking for, and that is a Raspberry Pi 5 alternative for our application which is available right now.