(2024-10-21) Time to ditch x86: why I have switched to RPi5 as my main desktop
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If there is a single redeeming quality that the modern era of computing has,
it's the abundance of single-board computers. We can call it modern if we
forget that some of the earliest home PCs (like ZX Spectrum) also mostly
were single-board: obviously the components were larger but replaceable at
home, something that current SBCs totally are missing. If we return to the
modern side of the topic, then, besides the highly dubious area of "internet
of things", single-board computers nowadays have matured enough to replace
your average desktop while eating less electricity. And this is what I
decided to check out myself as the low-powered computing is one of the main
topics of this phlog. And here's what I decided to do: get a Raspberry Pi 5
starter kit and install Alpine Linux on it. Of course it would be Alpine,
what else could it be? Who needs a huge "official" blob of Raspberry Pi OS
(ex-Raspbian) when you should use such amount of computing resources
sparingly? I won't lie, the installation process didn't go as well as I
thought at the first time, but that was totally my fault for not following
the manuals and not quite understanding what exactly I was doing. Once I
finally understood it though, everything went smoothly and I have a fresh
"classic" setup on the RPi5 I'm already writing this post on. The
post-installation phase is another thing, and I don't think it's necessary
to describe it here, just a small hint which groups your user should be a
part of at the end of this process: lp wheel audio input video netdev
docker. That's it.
That being said, I'd like to talk about "why" instead of "how". Well, for
starters, the x86 history is full of crutches upon crutches, and now it's a
total architectural mess. It's easier to start from scratch. ARM is one of
those attempts that got the most success. Ideally, I dream about writing the
same post regarding RISC-V, but there's no viable RISC-V-based low-power
desktop option as of the time of this writing that I could get my hands on.
Alas. I hope they appear soon enough though. The second point is, because
ARM is less quirky than x86, my RPi5 consumes 15 to 20 watts less than my
Asus PN41 nettop I replaced with it, while providing virtually the same
processing power. That's 20..23 vs 40..45 W (including the same display
monitor) we're talking about. This is significant. The third point is, with
all the power economy, it still is the same familiar Linux environment at
the end of the day. The only hurdle to overcome is running Wine (if you ever
need that), but other than that, it really is the same. I don't feel limited
in anything here compared to the previous nettop, besides the amount of RAM
(4 vs 32 GB). The thing is, I don't need that much RAM here either: its main
consumer is the Web browser (another motivation to use
Gopher/Nex/Spartan/Gemini more than ever, btw: my BFG eats at most 9MB per
window) and the problem mitigation is as easy as keeping the number of tabs
low. So, as the last point, I'd like to state that such environments keep
you disciplined and mindful about resources whatever you're doing.
Of course, such migration is no small thing and I spent a couple of days just
getting everything to the state I used to have. But I think that the end
result turned out to be more than satisfying. Given that my main "hobbyist"
focus has shifted to Tcl/Tk scripting which has excellent support of such
frugal setups, there really seem to be no drawbacks for making such a
fundamental architecture switch. By the way, it really goes to show how
seamless Linux and FOSS ecosystem is: you can switch architectures and get
the same set of tools and software in no time. This, I think, is one of its
greatest strengths. And more importantly, it demonstrates that the x86
hegemony has just been historically based upon the Faildows hegemony in the
desktop segment (the "wintel" amalgamation): once the latter has started
being not so important as before, so has the former. The destruction of this
status quo has already begun, and I hope that more accessible RISC-V-based
SBCs (or even some laptops, who knows) will be the final nail into the
corporate desktop monolith that cracks it apart. For now though, let me
continue with the Aarch64. I'll keep you posted on how this goes in the
future. At least the small part of this future that I still can shape myself.
