I’ve been a big fan of the Raspberry Pi single-board computer (SBC) since the introduction of the Model 1.
I’ve used the various incarnations of the boards in all types of projects but was limited in the scope of the projects by the amount of memory and computing power available.
The Raspberry Pi Model 4 (RPi4) is ready to change that.
in the version that has 8GB of RAM, the RPi4 is now capable of running a usable 64-bit LAMP server or a GUI-based laptop or tablet.
While it won’t compete with high-end made-to-order gaming or video-editing stations, it is perfectly suited for use as a browsing or lower-end programming workstation.
With the appropriate cooling, the 4-core CPU can easily be overclocked up to about 2.1 GHz, which is on a par with many low-end X86 systems.
It comes with a Gigabit Ethernet port, Wifi and BlueTooth. It also has two mini-HDMI ports, and the onboard GPU is capable of driving both.
There are a wide range of Operating Systems, including Raspberry Pi’s own version based on Debian, Ubuntu, even Windows 10. More on these later.
The $75 price tag for the board is on a par or lower than similarly powered SBCs, and the user base and available software community is enormous.