[GTALUG] Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Kit

[Stewart C. Russell]

Hi Aruna -

Just covering some points that didn't quite match my experience. 4GB
Raspberry Pi 4 good, 8 GB better, which it sounds like you've discovered.

> How hot does the unit become ? Does it require an add on fan shim ?
> Or will work fine without one ?

You can definitely get by without one. I have the temperature-controlled
Pimoroni Fan Shim in one, and it very rarely operates. It used to run a
lot before the firmware update late last year, but these days I barely
notice it.

> How easy or difficult would it be to boot off an external hard disk
> as compared to the SD card that comes with the Pi ?

More difficult, but not that hard. Note that the Raspberry Pi is picky
about SATA adapters. This one has a chipset that will give you pretty
close to the maximum speed possible with the Raspberry Pi 4's slightly
wiggly data path: STARTECH USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA III Hard Drive Adapter
Cable w/ UASP —
https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=5_1336_96&item_id=085674

This may all get radically simpler when UEFI for the Raspberry Pi
becomes a stable thing, but that's a little way off yet.

> Any other things to watch out for and be aware of before I purchase ?

If you do buy the full kit including keyboard and mouse, the compact 
keyboard and mouse are surprisingly good (for my values of "good"). It 
also has the clever feature of a 3-port USB hub built into the keyboard, 
so you can plug in the mouse and only use one port - and still have a 
nearby port for USB stick use.

The full kit comes with 2x micro-hdmi to HDMI cables. Absurd numbers of
Raspberry Pi 4s are selling as dual-monitor thin clients, but note
there's only room for *micro* HDMI connectors: it's hard to bodge with
adapters.

You also said:

> The hardest I will run that Pi will be when compiling the Linux
> Kernel and when making Video calls.

Ah. The Raspberry Pi kernel is *not quite* mainline yet. Building a new 
kernel will likely lose you useful things in the stock kernel, such as 
3d graphics acceleration and video acceleration. You also (currently) 
lose that if you run a 64-bit kernel.

The stock Raspberry Pi OS image (formerly known as Raspbian: it's 
Debian-based) has the best user experience. Every other distro hasn't 
got as much user support. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has a very 
definite view of how their desktop should look, so if you've done lots 
of customization to their LXDE-based desktop, it *will* all get reverted 
at the next refresh of the UI. This happens roughly quarterly.

Also, video calls: I don't know of any of the major video call providers 
that support ARM and Raspberry Pi. Google Meet through Chromium, maybe. 
Anything that requires a binary (so Zoom, Skype) is right out. Going to 
ARM from x86 for the first time can be a bit of a blow: the number of 
systems that only work on x86 is annoyingly high.

The Raspberry Pi camera is also fixed focus and doesn't do audio. It's 
not useful for video calls.

I don't know anyone well enough in the Edmonton area to help with 
installation, sorry.

cheers,
  Stewart


cheers,
  Stewart