I'm really hoping Intel, AMD, and board manufacturers continue to introduce x86 single board computers for consumer use. These boards being faster than a Raspberry Pi 5 while staying similarly...
Radxa X4 is a credit card-sized Intel Processor N100 single board computer (SBC) that costs almost the same as a Raspberry Pi 5 with the 4GB RAM model going for about $60 and the 8GB RAM variant around $80.
The x86 SBC offers many of the same features as the Raspberry Pi 5 including dual micro HDMI output, four USB 3.2/2.0 ports, Ethernet and WiFi networking, and the 40-pin GPIO header handled through a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller. Networking is better with 2.5GbE and WiFi 6, M.2 SSD support is built-in and four to eight times faster compared to PCIe HAT for the Pi 5, and the USB 3.2 ports are capable of 10 Gbps speed. So let’s little not too like, and the main downside is the lack of MIPI CSI and DSI connectors for projects requiring those camera and display interfaces.
I'm really hoping Intel, AMD, and board manufacturers continue to introduce x86 single board computers for consumer use. These boards being faster than a Raspberry Pi 5 while staying similarly priced is just a bonus. Not having to deal with the software support headaches brought on by ARM is benefit enough already.
Can't begin to tell you how much I'd love to have something like the clockworkPi uConsole, but x86.
Trying to run proprietary software on it, probably. To be a bit more charitable, a number of these devices (especially the cheaper, less popular ones) rely on custom kernels with changes that...
Trying to run proprietary software on it, probably.
To be a bit more charitable, a number of these devices (especially the cheaper, less popular ones) rely on custom kernels with changes that never get upstreamed, so you're stuck running an out-of-date vendor kernel with all its security vulnerabilities and incompatibilities with modern distros. But yeah, for more popular, better-supported devices like the Pis, I've never had an issue with Linux distro builds.
Bingo, this is the best example of what I was thinking of. A recent painful experience was trying to get NixOS running on a Raspberry Pi 5. Their wiki page on the subject explains a lot about why...
a number of these devices (especially the cheaper, less popular ones) rely on custom kernels with changes that never get upstreamed, so you're stuck running an out-of-date vendor kernel with all its security vulnerabilities and incompatibilities with modern distros
Bingo, this is the best example of what I was thinking of.
A recent painful experience was trying to get NixOS running on a Raspberry Pi 5. Their wiki page on the subject explains a lot about why support is so hard:
It seems like an interesting alternative to a Raspberry Pi 5. However, if you don't need the GPIO pins, an N100 mini-PC is about the same price once you factor in the cost of a case, heatsink, and...
It seems like an interesting alternative to a Raspberry Pi 5. However, if you don't need the GPIO pins, an N100 mini-PC is about the same price once you factor in the cost of a case, heatsink, and a teeny tiny NVMe hard drive.
My only real complaint about my N100 mini-pc is that the pitch of the tiny fans is annoying. It's tempting to just mod the top of the case hotrod style with a bigger fan or a just passive heatsink.
Given that there's an unpopulated footprint for eMMC system memory that will be used in a future hardware revision, I wonder if you could boot the OS from eMMC and use an adapter like this to...
Given that there's an unpopulated footprint for eMMC system memory that will be used in a future hardware revision, I wonder if you could boot the OS from eMMC and use an adapter like this to convert the M.2 port into something more interesting.
Turning a memstick port into a proper PCI-E slot could open the door for popping a used HBA SAS controller card to turn the little SBC into a storage powerhouse on a board.
I'm really hoping Intel, AMD, and board manufacturers continue to introduce x86 single board computers for consumer use. These boards being faster than a Raspberry Pi 5 while staying similarly priced is just a bonus. Not having to deal with the software support headaches brought on by ARM is benefit enough already.
Can't begin to tell you how much I'd love to have something like the clockworkPi uConsole, but x86.
I don’t think I’ve ever had software headaches with ARM SBCs. What are you doing?
Trying to run proprietary software on it, probably.
To be a bit more charitable, a number of these devices (especially the cheaper, less popular ones) rely on custom kernels with changes that never get upstreamed, so you're stuck running an out-of-date vendor kernel with all its security vulnerabilities and incompatibilities with modern distros. But yeah, for more popular, better-supported devices like the Pis, I've never had an issue with Linux distro builds.
Bingo, this is the best example of what I was thinking of.
A recent painful experience was trying to get NixOS running on a Raspberry Pi 5. Their wiki page on the subject explains a lot about why support is so hard:
https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/NixOS_on_ARM/Raspberry_Pi_5
https://i.horizon.pics/ANeCxBNyZI.png
But how many of these types of Intel-based single-board computers get BIOS/EFI security updates? ARM has less attack surface there.
It seems like an interesting alternative to a Raspberry Pi 5. However, if you don't need the GPIO pins, an N100 mini-PC is about the same price once you factor in the cost of a case, heatsink, and a teeny tiny NVMe hard drive.
My only real complaint about my N100 mini-pc is that the pitch of the tiny fans is annoying. It's tempting to just mod the top of the case hotrod style with a bigger fan or a just passive heatsink.
Given that there's an unpopulated footprint for eMMC system memory that will be used in a future hardware revision, I wonder if you could boot the OS from eMMC and use an adapter like this to convert the M.2 port into something more interesting.
Turning a memstick port into a proper PCI-E slot could open the door for popping a used HBA SAS controller card to turn the little SBC into a storage powerhouse on a board.
How much wattage does it use when running Linux with no user processes? Pi 5 was 5W+.