From the hardware perspective you're certainly right, but while iPhone and Android had made the initial groundbreaking in the kernel(s) and userland(s), Raspberry Pi arguably brought it to "touch distance" for the layman.
Before that there were already ARM servers too, but they're few and far between.
So I was trying to say that, Raspberry Pi and Apple M1 made ARM "touchable" with standard development tools and utilities for the normal people out there. So, this interaction accelerated the acceptance and software porting and grown the ecosystem faster.
From the hardware perspective you're certainly right, but while iPhone and Android had made the initial groundbreaking in the kernel(s) and userland(s), Raspberry Pi arguably brought it to "touch distance" for the layman.
Everyone already had an iPhone or Android, how was it not touch distance for the layman?
Saurik and the original jailbreakers did all the heavy lifting, APT, SSH, and the usual CLI tools were ported so they could enjoy their handheld Unix computers.
Pi was an image on a microSD, some computer interfaces, it was very slow, burned out the microSD card, and was discouraging for me to use when I had a much better computer, the phones were easy to invest effort in, if I had a way crappy computer I wouldn't do too much with it, most people throw PiHole and never touch it again.
> Neither was very hard, Android came with root in developer tools at first, has very easy root, and you could always just chroot if that was too hard.
Been there, done that. Doesn't matter. Tinkering with a critical life infrastructure device vs, tinkering with a device made for tinkering is different. Way different.
> Jailbreaking was so easy someone like Justin Beiber did it
Again, doesn't matter because of the reasons I've said earlier. I'm using both platforms for a decade, and won't do them to my primary devices either. Because these devices are handling a lot of stuff for me, tinkering with them is not an option.
> Pi was an image on a microSD, some computer interfaces, it was very slow, burned out the microSD card, and was discouraging for me to use when I had a much better computer, the phones were easy to invest effort in, if I had a way crappy computer I wouldn't do too much with it, most people throw PiHole and never touch it again.
Actually, with a semi-decent SD card, burning one out with a Raspberry Pi is almost impossible. If you're worried about that, you can add a ZRAM, move swap and some folders to it (as Raspbian does), and sync during reboots, or periodically. If you're downloading world on it, a USB drive can alleviate the worry too.
On the slowness side, a first generation Raspberry Pi has a comparable performance to a Pentium II - 266MHz system, with similar performance to GPUs of that era. Considering the things I've done (live webcasting for example) with a P2 at that time, A Raspberry Pi is a powerhouse for its size.
You may have a much better computer with way higher specs, but you're missing the point. A Pi is a literally unbrickable and forgettable Linux PC with decent performance and no noise for many tasks many people do. I'm running an home infrastructure on an OrangePi Zero and the bottleneck is the 512MB RAM, not the CPU. With a decent SD card, it's not slow either.
I can replace all of it with a Raspberry Pi 1 or 2, but the OrangePi is much smaller.
Just because it can't race with a specially built workstation, doesn't mean it's useless.
>Again, doesn't matter because of the reasons I've said earlier. I'm using both platforms for a decade, and won't do them to my primary devices either. Because these devices are handling a lot of stuff for me, tinkering with them is not an option.
If you use them for a lot of things, wouldn't you want to tinker them to make them run better? I certainly do on linux.
>You may have a much better computer with way higher specs, but you're missing the point. A Pi is a literally unbrickable and forgettable Linux PC with decent performance and no noise for many tasks many people do. I'm running an home infrastructure on an OrangePi Zero and the bottleneck is the 512MB RAM, not the CPU. With a decent SD card, it's not slow either.
I don't fear my PC being brickable, and its not noisy either, you can use water cooling for desktop or use a modern laptop, many are fanless (can't say the same about the Pi4). I have for example a router I used custom firmware on that can do everything a pihole can do, and more, just works quietly, it can do also act as a smart hub but I don't see the point.
>I can replace all of it with a Raspberry Pi 1 or 2, but the OrangePi is much smaller.
I find the problem with SBCs is they are too slow to be worthwhile, Android phones are much faster, have all inputs, and just works. Its not hard to buy an extra or use an old one if you fear tinkering.
>Been there, done that. Doesn't matter. Tinkering with a critical life infrastructure device vs, tinkering with a device made for tinkering is different. Way different.
What is "made for tinkering"? A Unix phone that can run all the software I want, a linux phone with root access, or my PSP which was made to play PSP and PS1 games with excellent homebrew counts as not made for tinkering seems alien. What can't they do? Throw a breakout board if you need the pins, I don't get the issue with using them. A one click root or unlock is way less complex than buying required parts to make an SBC work.
>On the slowness side, a first generation Raspberry Pi has a comparable performance to a Pentium II - 266MHz system, with similar performance to GPUs of that era. Considering the things I've done (live webcasting for example) with a P2 at that time, A Raspberry Pi is a powerhouse for its size.
>Just because it can't race with a specially built workstation, doesn't mean it's useless.
No its just not very useful for me, its hard to want to eat ground pork when there is steak to be had, I don't see the point of it really when my computer does everything better, why would someone want to use it to webcast for instance or use the PII era GPU? Sure you can emulate games one it, but I can on my computer already.
>I'm running an home infrastructure on an OrangePi Zero and the bottleneck is the 512MB RAM, not the CPU. With a decent SD card, it's not slow either.
You aren't disagreeing with me, you use it for a purpose (like a PiHole), not as a computer. I can use slower boards for purposes like yours too, what do you use it for? I don't really understand the benefit of a smart home hub, what are you running on it for what automation/smart?
Before that there were already ARM servers too, but they're few and far between.
So I was trying to say that, Raspberry Pi and Apple M1 made ARM "touchable" with standard development tools and utilities for the normal people out there. So, this interaction accelerated the acceptance and software porting and grown the ecosystem faster.