I was talking to my boss. We both share and annoyance with Microsoft, Apple and Android. It’s the usual reasons:

  • Privacy is suspect on all three. Especially if you go Android you might as well turn yourself in at the FBI.
  • Moving to subscription models, you can suck it (YCSI). If I want to use my word processor or a spreadsheet, I don’t want my PC having to connect to the internet and verify my license.
  • General fan boy dislike of 2 or more of the three companies, just because. This is quite common. My boss and wife hated Apple, until they actually used one. Quite honestly I don’t know anyone who truly likes Microsoft. But someone somewhere is a fan boy for everything.

My boss challenged me to come up with a computer that would dump all three – no Android, no Apple, no Microsoft. What would that be like?

Last year finished building out a RetroPie box with a Raspberry Pi4.  “Build” was probably on overstatement. I stuck it in a box and paid for a pre-set up SD card. Before the SD card came in the mail I played with the base Rasbian system that comes with the Raspberry Pi. And it was – pretty nice actually. It missed on a number of functionalities, it was a little hard to load software on, but it DID have LibreOffice, which lets you have word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and databases. It even had Python. When I took out the original SD card and put in the RetroPie system I felt like I killed something nice.

So, when my boss challenged me to build out a system I decided I’d use a Raspberry Pi and see what I could do with it. You could re-purpose and old laptop to run Linux just as easily. But that is still IBM style architecture set up for Microsoft products. I wanted to chuck the whole lot of established hokum.

Shown: New case, bought two months after initial purchase in May. It’s the tiny cube with blinky lights under the monitor. I am a sucker for blinky lights.

I started watching eBay for used Raspberry Pi systems. As it was now May of 2022 and the world had a supply crises, the Raspberry Pi boards were getting scarce. When you could find them getting one with a case, power supply, etc… was getting upwards of $250. You can kiss my ass (KMA)! I wanted to do this cheap! By the end of May I got a great deal at $117 for a fully assembled and used Pi4B with 4G of memory, a nice cooling fan and aluminum case and all necessary cables and power plugs. It even had a 128G SD card! Done!

Note:  As of August 2022, you can also just buy the Pi400, which is a  keyboard with a Raspberry Pi4 computer in it and bypass the above step.  It’s just as good for basic processing. Prices are starting to come down. That was expensive in May when I bought my used Pi4.

Once I got the Pi in the mail, I went to the Ubuntu site.  I knew Ubuntu was an excellent Linux operating system that seemed to be the preferred alternative to the native Raspbian system. I wanted to see how much better that was than Raspian. I used my old Mac to burn an SD card with Ubuntu.  After that I just put the SD card in the Raspberry Pi, and that’s it!

Note: I could have also just used the Raspberry Pi to burn the SD card, but due to my lack of easy familiarity I used the Mac.

The pleasant surprises:

  • Ubuntu is a big step up from Raspbian. If your intent is an everyday PC, you should load Ubuntu. You can add LibreOffice, it immediately found my wifi printer and connected, and it came with FireFox with was plenty adequate for my needs.
  • You can still get to any cloud app through FireFox.  So I can get out to iCloud for my photos for posts, store documents, etc…
  • I had maybe an hour of fumbling to check everything out and set it up. I had an old mouse with a wireless USB keyboard I could use. Bob’s Your Uncle (BYU).
  • I didn’t have to lower my expectations for a daily use PC. It met my requirements for having an office suite, access to a printer (It automatically found my wireless printer), Zoom and a web browser to run movie post nights (Yes, it runs TUBI and Pluto just fine). I hooked it to a pre-smart era TV and the graphics are fine for my bifocaled eyes.
  • Speed: It’s about as fast as a basic ChromeBook. If you were going to do this yourself, step up to the 8GB Pi 4 if you can to get more responsiveness from opening web browsers, etc… You can sip a cup of coffee in between opening programs, and FireFox is a little slow.  Nothing horrible though for daily use.
  • The power plug is a USB C and runs normal 5V out. So I could run this in a car, on a battery, etc… An additional portable feature is everything is ON THE PC. I don’t have to get my license checked to run the word processor. I can boot up in a tent in the wilderness and start writing. No internet or cloud necessary, just like God intended.

So what is a pain in the ass with this?

The Raspberry Pi comes with 4 USB ports, Ethernet, Bluetooth, WiFi, and two HDMI ports. Seen in the background with the red light – the annoying lamp switch to turn it on and off. Greasy fingerprint costs extra.

  • Dislike the hinkey physical click switch on the power supply cable. Is this a computer or a 1970’s table lamp? This can eventually be corrected with some software and a button. So overall that is a minor complaint.
  • The ARM64 architecture is not supported by every piece of software I would like. Yes, this is a first world problem. Brave, in particular, does not directly support this setup in Linux. I still have Firefox and Chromium, which is an open source version of Chrome. Firefox came with it and runs well enough. God knows Opera is available too.  Firefox is slow, as mentioned previously.  Workable, but slow.
  • Zoom has to be supported via web browser and not an app, which is a minor inconvenience. There was a Firefox download for it so that is what I’ll use. I will stick a camera on this thing and be ready to get drunk and flop around on Zoom nights. Again, this is a first world problem.
  • YouTube looks like crap.  It’s the only site that defaults to a bad resolution.  Don’t really care, I wish to get away from YouTube as well.
  • What about other programs beside basic office and such? Well, it starts to be a pain. Use this for a basic PC and be happy. Either that, or become a hobbyist and jump in the deep waters of Raspberry PI and Linux.
  • Some settings have to be adjusted in a terminal window (think DOS).  For instance, it always defaults to headphones instead of the TV speaker.  If I want to fix that it’s coding in a terminal window.  Boo!

I am going to continue to use explore with this thing – but overall I am pleased with the basic computer functionality. Beats a Chromebook, 10X cheaper than a new Mac or decent Windows PC and I don’t feel like my entire world is uploaded every night to an FBI database. I would recommend even for a main PC, as long as you don’t go outside what you would expect a Chromebook to do.  As of this August I got a few game emulators on it and can play older games.  Sadly, RetroPie does not support this setup as of yet.