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<h1 id="my-raspberry-pi-desktop">My Raspberry Pi Desktop</h1>
<p>2020-09-02</p>
<p>I use a Raspberry Pi 4 as my personal daily driver and it&#8217;s pretty great. I know these types of devices tend to be used for smaller pet-projects or fun experiments, but I thought I would share my experience using one as my main computer. Hopefully this can be a solid guide to help others who might be interested in creating a similar setup.</p>
<p>My desktop Pi working away on a regular morning:</p>
<h2 id="table-of-contents">Table of Contents</h2>
<ol>
<li><a href="#use-case">My Use Case</a></li>
<li><a href="#hardware">The Hardware</a></li>
<li><a href="#software">The Software</a></li>
<li><a href="#stats">Performance &#38; Stats</a></li>
</ol>
<p>I&#8217;m a web designer and developer by trade. Therefore, I require a decent amount of functionality from my computer - more than just simple web browsing and document editing. When I first set out testing if the RPi4 <em>could</em> become my main device, I was surprised at how capable the hardware &#47; software was at running all my required applications. My workload comprises of:</p>
<ul>
<li>Using Github&#47;Gitlab to pull&#47;push repos, open PRs, etc</li>
<li>Run SSG (Jekyll mostly) locally for testing</li>
<li>Run multiple WordPress instances locally</li>
<li>Edit design files (Photoshop, Illustrator, direct SVGs)</li>
<li>Simple web chat &#47; email</li>
</ul>
<p>Basic stuff, but I was originally doubtful of the RPi4 to be able to handle it all smoothly. I&#8217;m happy to say I was wrong.</p>
<p>The following hardware list is what I use specifically for my intended use case. I&#8217;m also a sucker for having cool looking SBC builds. By no means is this the &#8220;best setup&#8221; for everyone - I&#8217;m sure other combinations of gear might better suit your own personal needs.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Note</strong>: products in the hardware section are Amazon affiliate links</p>
</blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Raspberry Pi 4</li>
<li>X857 V1.0 mSATA SSD Shield Expansion Board (I&#8217;m using the X856)</li>
<li>128GB mSATA SSD</li>
<li>Acrylic Case with Heatsinks &#38; Fan</li>
<li>Raspberry Pi Keyboard &#38; Mouse</li>
<li>21.5&#8221; Acer Monitor</li>
</ul>
<p>The 32-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS (&#8216;Debian Buster&#8217; at the time of writing) is my OS of choice. Stable, reliable, and officially supported by the RPi community. It does the job.</p>
<p>The Pi has been overclocked to 2GHz in order to squeeze just a <em>little</em> extra out of the hardware. This has caused zero issues.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m also booting directly from the mSATA SSD (via USB booting) instead of relying on a slower microSD card. You can find tons of tutorials online on how to do the same, but I would recommend this one: <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boot-raspberry-pi-4-usb">How to Boot Raspberry Pi 4 From a USB SSD or Flash Drive</a></p>
<p>After that, I simply installed my required apps &#47; configs (where applicable):</p>
<ul>
<li>Chromium (<em>preinstalled</em>)</li>
<li>Firefox ESR</li>
<li>Pale Moon</li>
<li>Code OSS</li>
<li>Terminal (<em>preinstalled</em>)</li>
<li>Libre Office Suite</li>
<li>Evolution</li>
<li>Figma (Web - no install needed)</li>
<li>Apache2 &#47; MySQL</li>
<li>Blueman (helpful GUI for bluetooth)</li>
</ul>
<p>What my plain desktop looks like:</p>
<p>Using this build day-to-day, I can honestly say I don&#8217;t hit any hiccups or lag at all. Multiple applications and WordPress instances are running in the background, while 10-15 tabs are open in the Chromium browser. The little Pi just chugs along without breaking a sweat.</p>
<p>My average CPU temperature sits around 51&#176; (with heatsinks &#38; fan active) while CPU usage never really cranks past 90% during even &#8220;intensive&#8221; processes.</p>
<p>Since <em>actual</em> data speaks louder than anecdotal chit-chat, I performed a very simple read&#47;write test on my mSATA SSD.</p>
<p>First, clear the cache to avoid conflicting data:</p>
<pre><code>sync; echo 3 | sudo tee &#47;proc&#47;sys&#47;vm&#47;drop_caches
</code></pre>
<h3 id="write">Write</h3>
<p>Write script run:</p>
<pre><code>dd if=&#47;dev&#47;zero of=~&#47;test.tmp bs=500K count=1024
</code></pre>
<p>Write output:</p>
<pre><code>524288000 bytes (524 MB, 500 MiB) copied, 1.95478 s, 268 MB&#47;s
</code></pre>
<h3 id="read">Read</h3>
<p>Read script:</p>
<pre><code>dd if=~&#47;test.tmp of=&#47;dev&#47;null bs=500K count=1024
</code></pre>
<p>Read output:</p>
<pre><code>524288000 bytes (524 MB, 500 MiB) copied, 0.770993 s, 680 MB&#47;s
</code></pre>
<p>This gives a total read&#47;write value of: <strong>268 MB &#47; 680 MB</strong> per second. Compare that to average microSD card speeds floating around <strong>22 MB &#47; 170MB</strong> per second and you can see (and feel) the massive speed difference. Things are just snappier.</p>
<p><strong>Note</strong>: Obviously extremely high-end (read: expensive) microSD cards <em>might</em> hit read&#47;write speeds similar to that of an SSD. The issue is that you are more likely to corrupt or reach end-of-life with a microSD card - hence why I don&#8217;t recommend them.</p>
<h2 id="final-thoughts">Final Thoughts</h2>
<p>I love that I can use a fairly cheap Raspberry Pi 4 as my main, personal desktop. Of course, some people might roll their eyes at this build and say, &#8220;why not just get a cheaper, more powerful laptop off eBay?&#8221;. To that I would respond: <em>you&#8217;re missing the point</em>. </p>
<p>It was fun to put together this simple desktop. The fact that it runs fast and stable enough to be my daily driver is a great bonus. If this build interests you at all, I highly recommend giving it a go.</p>
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