Last Updated on October 8, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
We are looking for a Pi alternative which is as powerful and easy to use as the laptop we have at home. Aren t there YouTube video demos which suggest that these devices exist? But why do we not find an independent community of happy users and developers for those?
The first home computers such as the TRS-80 Model 1 came 1977 onto market
- it was from RadioShack, along with the Apple II and the Commodore PET in 2001, one of the first home computers that were produced in significant numbers as finished copies.
- It came onto the market in 1977 and was equipped with a Z80 CPU from Zilog, which ran at a clock frequency of 1.77 MHz.
- The TRS-80 had good sales success particularly in the USA. The price for a new device in Germany was 3000 USD.
Raspberry Pi first came into existence in 2006 at the University of Cambridge in the university’s computer laboratory, nd the first Pi came in 2012 onto the market
- A prototype using an Atmel ATmega644 microcontroller was produced in 2006.
- The layout of the board is released as open source.
- 50 Alpha boards were delivered in August 2011.
- These devices were functionally identical to the later Model B of the Raspberry Pi
Home computers are much ahead in their development compared to SBCs since there development period is around 30 years longer. If we are looking for a single board computer who can do the same as a home computer, then it is eventually the Raspberry Pi 5. But is the Pi 5 not also a dangerous device for developers with a long-term goal? Is the Pi 5 the not from a company who has no real competitor on the market. And did not Raspberry Pi take advantage of this situation as we have seen during Corona how they treated us costumers?
Radxa was founded 2013 – but is it a Pi competitor?
We have the first single board computer from Radxa which can compete with the first Home Computers and that is the TRS-80 Model 1 from 1977:
https://ralsina.me/weblog/posts/so-i-built-a-laptop.html
But is this device interesting for developers? Aren’t devices like this not the only real alternative if we are looking for an alternative to Raspberry Pi? There are more and more competitors to Raspberry Pi s, but according to our own little experience, none of those is a real competitor to the Pi s. But does Raspberry Pi have given up the home market? Since it has become more and more difficult to make money out of it? And there are more and more competitors out there, which cannot make money out of those either? And it will take time until they become really interesting for developers.
If we consider all of these arguments we are really happy about Roberto Alsina’s laptop based on the Radxa zero who showed us what is possible with this device and what not. It is one of the rare demos of a Raspberry Pi alternative which shows us what we can do with it. But the consequence for us personally is from what we have learned that we stop searching for a single board computer which is as powerful, easy to use and has as many features as the laptop which we have at home.