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Is an Intel N100 or N150 a better value than a Raspberry Pi?

(www.jeffgeerling.com)
276 points transpute | 4 comments | 04 Jul 25 12:08 UTC | HN request time: 1.229s | source
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Venn1 ◴[04 Jul 25 15:53 UTC] No.44465588[source]▶
Low cost x86_64 solutions beat the pants off ARM in the PPPITA (performance per pain in the arse) department. The Raspberry Pi software ecosystem advantage nopes the moment x86 shows up to the party. Granted, it does suck the fun out of spending a weekend trying to get an application to compile.

Whether it's Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Banana Pi, or anything similar, by the time you buy the SBC and accessories, you're looking at around $100. The N100 or N150 are obvious choices if you're looking for a small, low power block of silicon to get something done.

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reactordev ◴[04 Jul 25 15:57 UTC] No.44465617[source]▶
I’m going to argue there’s no difference in “ecosystem” between arm and x86 anymore. It’s as simple as compiling with a flag. Your frustrations are your own.

I will give you the extra cost of the accessories and plugs you need just to get a raspberry pi up and running.

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1. blarg1 ◴[04 Jul 25 16:36 UTC] No.44465922[source]▶
Currently with the latest pi os version, moonlight streaming's video hardware support doesn't work.

While it's the the fault of the moonlight devs (also you can compile it yourself to get it working), the binary package version has been broken for 2+ months now.

If I was using archlinux on x86 I wouldn't have problems like this.

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2. reactordev ◴[04 Jul 25 16:48 UTC] No.44466027[source]▶
Stale packages are a distro problem, not a platform one. You said so yourself, you can compile it and it works. Your problem isn’t with ARM. Arch on arm works fine.
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3. wingworks ◴[04 Jul 25 20:17 UTC] No.44467548[source]▶
While not ARMs fault, the pain is still very real for the end user. Compiling once is maybe ok, if you get lucky. But more often than not you end up needing to compile several things, and then again every time there is an update you want. Trying to automatic that is also a pain.

It's just so much extra work, that I'd rather spend working on my project, and not compiling.

I love that we in Linux world have compiling as an option for most apps, but there is a time and place for it.

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4. reactordev ◴[04 Jul 25 20:35 UTC] No.44467675{3}[source]▶
Build chain problem, not an ARM one. That said, this is THE WORST problem. Having to recompile all dependencies to a platform target just so your own Makefile will build.

I feel like distros have an obligation to cross compile all packages for x86 and arm in their own build chains. That’s ultimately where this problem lies. You can’t apt install the dependencies you need to make install your thing.