THE RASPBERRY PI IS SHIT

[CandyDarling]

That is all.

[dng]

hooray

[dng]

wait i mean how dare you

[dng]

i've still never actually seen a raspberry pi let alone used one

[blombluss]

I was *this close* to getting a PI 400, but didn't. I'm still very much considering purchasing one when my Chromebit finally conks out, so any issues you've had with the machine, Michelle, well, I'm all ears!

[blombluss]

i've still never actually seen a raspberry pi let alone used one

It's like a Dragon 32, but it can handle both upper and lower case letters!

[Pual]

I don’t think I’ve used my pi since May

[Pual]

It’s sat there on the desk under some headphones

[Pual]

Amazingly it’s about the only thing that the cat hasn’t kicked off the desk

[blombluss]

I expect your cat is a Linux evangelist - most are.

[CandyDarling]

I've been trying to make a Christmas present for my sister with a Pi Zero W, the tiniest and more cut-down Pi (but with built-in WiFi). Everything is so fiddly. I've more or less got used to the bullshit you get with Linux (at least the particular type of Linux that the Pi runs on), but I've come a cropper with the official Pi Zero case, of all things. (Remember that the Pi is usually sold as a single bare board.)

The case is so shit and badly designed that the holes for the micro USB ports are slightly too high, and the actual ports on the board itself are slightly too far away, meaning I can't properly plug anything in without taking the Pi out of the case first. And the nature of the design means I won't be able to put the Pi back in the case again afterwards, because the bloody USB connections will be in the way. And the board itself doesn't really slot neatly in, it keeps shifting about inside because the case is slightly too long. For some reason all the measurements are a bit out in the precisely the wrong way.

Also, even if you manage to do everything I just said, you have to take the entire Pi out of the case whenever you need to swap the SD card out with a new one, because the designer neglected to add a little slot which would allow you to do that without physically removing it first. I know they base their company around the ideals of Acorn Computers, but sometimes it feels more like the most baffling and chaotic moments of early 80s Sinclair Research.

As for the Pi 400 - it's actually okay. The fact it's in a keyboard like an early 80s computer and not a single bare board exposed to the elements helps with everything considerably. Also you can boot it off a USB stick instead of mucking about with an SD card if required. However, it's best used with an extra on/off device that connects in-between the power supply and the 400, as it doesn't have its own on/off switch of any kind, because you have to leave something important out when you're designing a Raspberry Pi product.

Also there are continuing concerns over the heat the CPU creates.

[Pual]

Yes the lack of an on/off switch is erm... odd

[Pual]

On the other hand I had a cherry pie the other day which was very good

[The Robotic Anomaly]

I bought a Pi 400 because it was cheap and I assumed they'd fixed the design issues since the Pi 1, which was the last one I own. But no, it still likes to suicide at random intervals - first time I set it up, I updated it, the update failed and it wouldn't boot. It didn't say "Hey I can't boot oops!" or whatever, it just gave a vaguely terrifying message and froze.

I know we all enjoyed fixing arcane computer errors in the 80s, but you'd don't HAVE to include that. It would be nice if it didn't feel like I was using a computer made out of the finest porcelain.

[CandyDarling]

One major problem with Pis is that they run the OS and usually everything else from an SD card, and the more read / write cycles you have with an SD card the quicker it fails. And as the Pi uses an SD card as basically a hard drive, that happens quite frequently.

I think the idea of making a basic computer to help kids learn coding is an interesting one, but the Pi absolutely has not achieved that aim. Maybe there's some demented sprogs about who don't mind figuring out arcane Linux commands and correcting the indentation of Python scripts, but for most it'll be a wash out. It's mainly benefited the "maker" community instead - which isn't a slam against them necessarily, but it's a different result to the very high and mighty one that keeps getting claimed. And half the time the "maker" stuff ends up not being that great or useful anyway.

The latest thing is the Raspberry Pi Pico, which is a micro-controller along the lines of the Arduino rather than a full computer. Seeing as there's no OS or Linux to bother with (thank Christ) and it just runs a single program at a time, with not even a display to bother with, maybe a very very cut down basic device like that could potentially be actually useful. I've not seen one yet, though.

[CandyDarling]

Oh, and the first time I got a Pi 400, I mainly got it to run a form of Kodi on it (a massive media player thing) so I could play local videos off a network drive in a particular manner, but it suicided every time I booted the installation up. Apparently it was due to some very minor software incompatibility that affected 400s but not Pi 4s. It took a good four months for the Kodi developers to correct it.

And then it turned out Kodi was way too much for what I wanted it to do. I just wanted to navigate a network folder and play a video on my TV, but it made doing that into a nightmare, and insisted on also offering me weather updates and live TV and other shite that I didn't need. And normal playlists were replaced with "smart playlists", which were pig-shit thick.

[blombluss]

Many thanks to Trig and Michelle for sharing their experiences. I'm not putting myself through all that niggly crap - I'll buy a cheapo PC, instead!

[blombluss]

On the other hand I had a cherry pie the other day which was very good

But did you Warrant the Cherry Pie? And did it put a smile on your face, ten miles wide?

[CandyDarling]

Update: My Raspberry Pi now refuses to switch on. No lights or anything.

I will never so much as touch a Raspberry bloody Pi for as long as I live.

[blombluss]

Oh bums!

[dng]

Imagine if there was a raspberyy pi brand printer

[dng]

the worst possible implimentation of the worst possible technology ever

[CandyDarling]

Update 2: It has suddenly decided to work again. There were absolutely no differences in setup.

[An Unicorn]

Did you try headbutting it

[CandyDarling]

No headbutts were involved. I just replugged it and it clearly thought "Okay, I'll switch on today"

[endar]

dodgy wire perhaps

[blombluss]

the worst possible implimentation of the worst possible technology ever

I imagine it'd be hailed for only catching fire 10% of the time when in operation!

[An Unicorn]

But what if I had wanted it to catch fire in operation?

[blombluss]

You need to purchase a Pronguss 8 Highly Combustible printer for in-operation ablaze certainty.

[The Robotic Anomaly]

I've got the day off, maybe I'll power up my Pi 400 and see what goes wrong this time

[blombluss]

And Trig was never heard of again...

[The Robotic Anomaly]

I got one of those fancy lightgun jobbies and thought I'd try it with my Pi 400
There's a preconfigured image that *should* just boot up

Of course it doesn't. It gets stuck on some meaningless part, never moving on. If I reboot it gets stuck on a DIFFERENT part. Then it dies.

Most forums seem to suggest it's a bad SD card, but my suspicion is that the Pi is just very very picky when it comes to SD cards. This one works with the normal OS, but maybe this new one is just too much for it. Either way it's a shockingly bad experience.

I'll probably use my other tiny PC instead, because at least that works.

[The Robotic Anomaly]

Seems I might have been using the "wrong" HDMI port
They claim this is a made up issue - it's not

[blombluss]

I got one of those fancy lightgun jobbies and thought I'd try it with my Pi 400

Is that one of those Donald Sinden lightguns, Trig? They look ace-uss!

[The Robotic Anomaly]

Yes it is
It's great once it's working, but trying to set it up with a Raspberry Pi was fairly infuriating

[CandyDarling]

Is that one of those Donald Sinden lightguns, Trig?

I wish those lightguns were sold in shops, in boxes with a glowering / faintly bemused Donald Sinden face on them

Next to a starburst graphic that has the text "COMPATIBLE WITH IBM PC DERIVATIVES, POSSIBLY NOT RASPBERRY PI"

[blombluss]

I was *this close* to getting a PI 400, but didn't. I'm still very much considering purchasing one when my Chromebit finally conks out, so any issues you've had with the machine, Michelle, well, I'm all ears!

I again looked at the PI 400, but tonight have settled for a £200 W10 laptop refurb, because I don't cope well with change.

[Mrak]

I have 2 of those lightguns, but I'm yet to use them. Want to play point blank

[blombluss]

I again looked at the PI 400, but tonight have settled for a £200 W10 laptop refurb, because I don't cope well with change.

Naturally the first thing I did this afternoon was to install a hooky copy of Flash CS6 on it.

[CandyDarling]

Raspberry Pis appear to be effectively unavailable at the moment* due to chip shortages, through there are some claims and vague speculation of additional bottleneck-creating misdeeds happening within the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Indeed, this page has some intriguing claims of general shittiness which would point to things not being brilliant there. (Particularly the review of the company titled "Toxic Leadership Dragging Morale Through The Mud".) And this site here has a thing from a manufacturer's point of view (scroll down a bit to the one star review).

In other news, my Pi 400, which I thought I had packed away safely, has genuinely vanished. I have no idea where it could have gone, as it's not like you can lose a keyboard down the back of a sofa.

* You can buy a Pi 4 or 400 by paying scalpers on Amazon or eBay, of course...

[Mrak]

I'm tempted to sell all my raspberry pis while they're unavailable. I just can't be arsed to do it.

[blombluss]

Sell 'em all now and then retire on the proceeds to Bermuda!