There are a lot of reasons not to give them your money. They’re assholes to the maker community and they openly talk shit on a lot of their customer base. That’s beside the point, though, really.
It’s just not a spectacular option for hosting. In order to get a Rpi competitive with even the shittiest laptop from 7 years ago, you’re going to end up spending more than you would spend on a decent laptop from 7 years ago.
If it is a computer that turns on, it will likely function orders of magnitude better than an Rpi and won’t bind you to ARM architecture. My entire hosting setup was pulled out of a recycling pile for free. Install ubuntu/ubuntu server and enjoy yourself.
If you intend on spending any amount of money on this hobby, I cannot express enough how much I recommend against any of that money going toward a Raspberry Pi.
EDIT: A lot of you seem to be reading this as “Raspberry Pis are all nonfunctional” and getting mad about it. Don’t do that.
Not OP, but my Lenovo tiny computer on ebay is about $60 and will run circles around a raspberry pi
Power usage isn’t too much higher, it’s upgradeable, and it’s x86-64 architecture so more things are supported.
My tiny has an i7 and was a bit more expensive, but it’s a powerful little guy. I added more ram for a total of 32, and it does better than my “old” server (technically from same era).
Can’t speak for the other stuff.
Do you run Windows on yours, or have you installed a different OS to run things?
Not op but I have 3 tiny PCs and I run Linux on them. But then I don’t run windows at all because it honestly sucks.
I run proxmox on bare metal. I have a couple VMs for docker, and video game servers.
facts, at this point you are paying for size, gpio and the fact that its a form factor with industrial grade options easily available. not really as useful for a hobbyist at the price though.
For projects I prefer an ESP32 unless it needs a fancy GUI.
Any ESP32 you would recommend with easy wired networking (like DHCP client), easy language (python, node, c#. Tbh these are just the ones I know), easy IDE, and a bunch of libraries (like OSC, WebSockets, mqtt, rabbitmq, as well as stuff for various GPIO stuff)?
I’ve gone down a street of node-red on a raspberry pi, and I find it really easy to make complex things.
But 90% of my stuff is node->JS function->node. And I feel like I could do better!
I haven’t found one with wired (haven’t looked through either), mine are all wireless. I played with visual studio code as a IDE, and it worked pretty well. You can also use the Arduino IDE, but it’s been forever since I’ve used that. I’m about to dip my toes into ESPHome and combine with my home assistant.
Same with the HP elite desks, and don’t forget you can get off lease Chromebooks with much better specs than pi for ~$60 as well