The Banana Pi BPI-M7 single board computer is equipped with up to 32GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash, and features an M.2 2280 socket for one NVMe SSD, three display interfaces (HDMI, USB-C, MIPI DSI), two camera connectors, dual 2.5GbE, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, a few USB ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion.
Good specs, but the rpi still has the absolute big advantage of it’s vast field of available turnkey software.
There is a big difference between “it works out of the box” and “it works so-so after a lot of fiddling, and I still don’t know why”.
Also GPU drivers.
If you’re mad at NVidia for their closed-source drivers, then remember that ARM seldom makes their Linux drivers available for free, so you have to either have to deal with absolutely no GPU driver while the CPU does the graphics rendering (might not be a big deal on a NAS though), or with open source drivers that are less capable than the Nouveau drivers and even fiddlier to install. The ARM Mali driver issue is so bad I was legit thinking on a solution to run the Android binary blobs (which at least are available by ripping them off from the Android kernel) on regular Linux, a lot of function call redirects would likely take care of that issue.
I’ve got one of those cheap Rockchip rk322x TV boxes and it took me fucking literal hours to get the Mali driver working and the performance, while noticeably better, was still way worse than if I ran it’s stock Android image on it.
Depends on your use-case. If you want to use GPIO and other low level features, yes the Pi is faster to get going, if you’re just using ir for a NAS/storage then a board like that will work out of the box.
At which point you’re better off with a mini pc.
I totally agree with you there. https://lemmy.world/comment/5500098:
For eg. for 100€ you can find an HP Mini with an i5 8th gen + 16GB of ram + 256GB NVME that obviously has a case, a LOT of I/O, PCIe (m2) comes with a power adapter and outperforms a RPi5 in all possible ways. Note that the RPi5 8GB of ram will cost you 80€ + case + power adapter + cable + bullshit adapter + SD card + whatever else money grab - the Pi isn’t just a good option.
I even went further on GPIOs and low level electronics here https://lemmy.world/comment/5500638:
RPi 2B+ for around 10$ nowadays (…) other brand new cheap SBCs such as the Radxa Zero 3W or the Zero 3E or even the Raspberry Pi Zero W. The point is that it doesn’t make sense to buy a standard and expensive RPi for things that don’t require much CPU. If you don’t really need an OS and you code C or MicroPython a 3.5$ ESP32 board as well.
This is the problem I see with these “high end pi” systems. The benefit of the RPI is low-cost and small form factor along with the GPIO.
When you start to get too expensive you compete with more capable systems in the same price range.
Well, it always depends on the use case. And if you think over the use case, maybe other solutions might even be better.
