The truth about Raspberry Pi devices

After working with Raspberry Pi devices for a few months, there are a great many good things about them and few bad things about them.

The good

  1. Small footprint

  2. You can get them at Target (just the motherboard) or you can get the kit on Amzaon (motherboard, case, heatsinks, power supply) for under $100.00

  3. Runs on 5.1 volts and 4000 milliamps of power (using a USB C connection)

  4. A powerful processor (64 bit with 8 cores)

  5. Can be quiet to use for fan operation

  6. Heat sinks are easy to apply (no need for the messy thermal compound).

  7. Cooling temperature at about 40 degrees Celsius under constant operation.

  8. Can hookup two HDMI monitors to the device (uses the smaller HDMI connectors).

  9. Has a separate audio port.

  10. Works well with Ubuntu Server 20 LTS

  11. Most Linux operating systems are free

  12. Most Linux operating systems can function on older computers

32-bit hardware can be supported in Linux, but it has the same memory limitations that Windows has for 32-bit operating systems (2 gb per app).

  1. There maybe some setup to do which the internet has good resources on how to set things up.

It can take some time and patience but just remember you didn't have to pay $100 or more for an operating system. You can make good use of Microsoft One Note to document what you did.

  1. You can have a free server using Ubuntu.

Windows Server can run $5,000 for 2019 with 16 cores (you only need 8 cores for this device). Windows Server isn't intended to run on ARM processors.

The Bad

  1. No built in time clock that is battery backed

You can buy one and install it. There is a process to update the time from the battery to the motherboard. To save on costs, the built in clock is only software controlled and will reset when connected to a network using the clock on the router. This process is fine for most applications but if you are doing connections to file servers or creating a cloud server, you may want to consider purchasing one especially if you are installing Ubuntu Server (it's a bit slow to pick up the time from the router with Ubuntu).

  1. Cables everywhere.

Since the motherboard is the only thing enclosed, this means the power cord, monitor cords, Ethernet cable, and USB cords will appear. They can be bundled together.

  1. Operates on a micro SD card for boot purposes.

It boots very quick this way but a micro SD card isn't really designed for running some computer applications. In addition, micro SD cards weren't intended to be used for server purposes.

While a class 10 memory card is fast for pictures and recording video, it is another story if you are using cards greater than 512 GB of memory. On a Raspberry Pi, the bigger they are, the slower they are.

When running drive storage for servers requires a different file format that wasn't intended for these cards (ntfs). Like Windows computers, you can only operate ntfs for web servers.

  1. Because of the limitations of micro SD storage, you need to install an external hard drive.

You can use the magnetic ones or the solid state ones but make sure your external drive isn't a USB flash drive or another micro SD card.

  1. When installing an external hard drive, you have to tell Linux what is so that it can stay on your computer at all times.

The process of mounting a storage was something that goes back to the early days of Linux. Even in Xenix classes, the term was used. The reason why is that this operating system was constructed in the mid 1960's when tape drives, punch cards were the normal for storing things. This system uses a very generic way to add hardware.

This operating system still uses the same rules that existed over 50 years ago. It knows a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse (thanks to Linux) but it doesn't know how to deal with other hardware unless you tell it so.

As the clock example demonstrates, you do have to tell it what it is and where it is. If you do it the right way, those instructions will stay in the boot process (using fstab for storage). Once you tell Linux about the device, then there is other concerns that you have to take care of when it comes to how the drive is accessed to prevent others from getting in that aren't authorized to do so.

The best rule to remember about Linux is that "plug and play" doesn't exist.

  1. Raspberry Pi contains and ARM processor. It's isn't made from AMD or Intel.

While your phone contains a Smapdragon ARM processor (in most cases). Android and Ios are based on Linux platforms as well, there maybe some limitations in software applications that you can find on computer using an Intel or AMD processor but aren't available or recognized for ARM processors.

This is true for database server systems. MySQL works on Raspberry Pi systems (using the current 8.0 version) running Ubunut but Raspian (the standard Linux operating system for Raspberry Pi using MariaDB. While it is similar to MySQL it does use the 5.7 version that doesn't work with the encrypted passwords used in version 8.0.