So I finally got around to getting an RPi2, which is my first RPi in general. I tried Raspbian and wasn't really diggin it (keybinds were kinda funky off the bat and it seemed like my download speeds were atrocious), so I switched to Ubuntu MATE ARM. That was a little bit slow, so I installed i3 and it seems to help out a little with overall speed. I understand with this processor and 1GB of RAM it's not going to be blazing fast no matter what I put on it, but I'm hoping to get it at least pretty snappy.
One weird thing I've noticed is when I apt-get it takes forever to connect to ports.ubuntu.com.
The other is that I keep getting warnings saying I'm almost out of space. So I checked and my partitions are just barely large enough to fit everything necessary on them. So I installed GParted and it kept erroring out when I tried to resize the home partition to take up the rest of the space on my SD card. Maybe I'm just doing something stupid because I'm tired, I dunno, or maybe GParted doesn't work with ARM processors.
I might end up running Arch ARM with i3 just for funsies and as a learning experience.
What's everyone else's opinions on running RPi's? What seems to work best in terms of performance? Do you think it would be suitable as just a light coding rig (no lag for simple stuff)? I'm just wanting to use mine as a dedicated, cheap Linux box. But if I can't get it to even do light tasks without lagging then I might just make it a LAMP server because I've been wanting to learn how to do that too and there's a tutorial on raspberrypi.org.
Did you expand the root partition after installing? If not run: sudo raspi-config and select expand_rootfs.
What kind of coding do you want to do? The RPi was born to be an inexpensive coding platform. It can also be used as an headless server. So you can set up a web server.
I own a RPi 1 model B and I'm using it as a media center.
Usually there should be a commandline "GUI" program called raspi-config (at least for raspbian I know it for shure) you first of all should run that; you only need to do "sudo raspi-config" and it will bring you up the GUI.
There you find all the nesecarry options to set up your raspberry; extend your filesystem (to use the whole SD cards capacity; change keymap, locale and language; set memory ration (if you use GUI give the graphics core more memory; if your console only keep it minimum)
For what to do: look up raspberry projects; everything you could do with the original one you can do with the Pi2 and even more. You can do software projects and even integrate it into hardware projects; I have a whole of 7 of theses suckers at my home =D
Performance here is a bit of a relative term for the SOC style computers. By which I mean that from my experience with the Rpi2 that I have been able to get a relatively snap desktop but apps have been slow. I should also mention that has been around 5 months since I have play with a desktop as I mainly use it for Kodi. However I was impressed with Pidora. Regardless of the distro 1st thing I would in use Midori or someother "light" Browser. It is my most hated experience is waiting for pages to open. I try rekonq and few others bit it was the best.
Slow I think you will be able to use it as your linux box with judicious choice of apps.
I had to quit recommending it as a bargain "try linux" platform as people tend to just NOT understand that it's not the OS but the hardware that does not feel as snappy as your i7 with SSD. But I personally love the pies; I do only have one with a GUI (kodi) the others are headless; One even streams constant 1080p via omxplayer but other than that no screens attached to the other 5 ^^
Looks nice as well I love how those SoCs evolve in the past years.
The best about the cluster backplate for the PI0 is the fact that on only need 1 (one) powerbrick; I am yet looking for a good quality powered USB HUB to abuse as a compact multiport USB PSU;
There is the backplates designers twitter https://twitter.com/9_ties hes got a bunch of nice pics and they are going to crowdfund it.
Thank you for the recommendations. I ended up putting Raspbian back on it and setting up a LAMP server, since I am going to school for web development I kinda figured that would be a good project to start working on. Of course, not everything is working how it should, but that's all part of learning :P
Since it can't run most programs all that smoothly I will also use this as an opportunity to learn nano or Vim.
Overall it seems to be working better. I switched from Default to LXDE, which is running smoother and looks much better imo. I was able to run raspi-config (not available on Ubuntu MATE Arm, at least not by default, which is why I switched back to Raspbian) and expand the filesystem. Since I have 1GB or RAM I decided to give my graphics 256MB. Didn't wanna go too high because I'm not doing anything graphically intensive with it, but I figured it might come in handy some time.
If you decide to run your LAMP headless you can always call raspi-config again and set the ratio to 8/16 what ever you feel like to give the processor the most RAM; reboot and your good;
Personally, when I had my Rpi2 I loved the MATE image, loved it so much I actually switched my dual boot linux to it. While it is a bit on the slower side, it is great for basic computing function. Recently my pi died though and I picked up an Odroid C1+ to replace it. The C1 does have sightly better specs (faster core clock, faster memory speeds) but my biggest thing was I wanted to test Android out on these kinds of devices and the rpi2 has no support (there was a project but last i checked it's dead). Back to your post I mainly use mine as a media center as Kodi on one of these things is amazing for those looking to cut the cord. Also like someone stated use Gparted to expand the root system.
Where I'm at Comcast has awesome service. I'm paying for 150 Mbps, getting ~120 on 2.4 GHz and ~170 on 5 GHz.
AT&T on the other hand, ugh, never again. I was paying for 75 Mbps (same price as Comcast's 150, so I was getting ripped off there, although in all fairness Comcast was running a special) and I was only topping out at ~22 Mbps . Called them to send someone out to fix it. They said there wasn't anything they could do to improve it, and that it was within their acceptable speeds for that plan so I'd have to upgrade to the next tier if I wanted faster internet. Lol, fuck off AT&T. How is it acceptable to only be getting about 1/3 of the speed that you're paying for? Complete bullshit. If I'm paying for 75, I better be getting ~40 MINIMUM.
Back on topic: Once I get more accustomed to the terminal and whatnot, I'm going to be running my Pi headless. But for now I'm going to use it as a learning environment for LAMP, Vim or nano (haven't decided yet), and general command line stuff.