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Is it time to end our love affair with R-PI?

KennyMillar

It has been almost impossible to buy R-PI for so long now.

The foundation say they are still manufacturing 400,000 a month - but where are they going? 
Certainly not to many retailers.

Is it time to find alternatives, and walk away from R-PI?

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  • There are already a number of alternatives out there: Libre Computer, Orange Pi, Banana Pi, BeagleBone Black, and more.

    Some are more powerful. Some offer additional features (and form factors). All run some form of Linux. And most of them are available today.

    If your focus is the GPIO then boards like the BeagleBone are already a better option. And if your focus is a low-cost computing platform, then you can add in the NUC and a ton of other items.

    Will the mass market move to one of these? Probably not. With so many options there will just be fragmentation moving forward.

    The apparent shift of focus for Raspberry Pi Trading, LTD to industrial/commercial customers does imply it is time for the non-commercial market to consider alternatives.

    However, I doubt any will become as ubiquitous as the Pi had been.

  • in reply to baldengineer

    They are fine - but, to my knowledge, none has the same support Rpi has.

    I'm not talking about help and forums, but about the operating system.

    CNX Software often reviews boards like that and often the main issues are the support for the Operating Systems (or the Operating Systems available). Sometimes a login is necessary and the forums are really really slow .

    It's still hard to get a RPI, but sites like rpi locator - the Twitter mainly for the alerts - can give you a hand in that. Because of them I was able to purchase two RPI4 and 2 RPI Zero W 2 last year.

    IMHO, while the Raspberry Foundation can keep up with the forums, the help, the support, the tutorials and all that, they will still be #1 .

  • in reply to feiticeir0
    feiticeir0 said:
    IMHO, while the Raspberry Foundation can keep up with the forums, the help, the support, the tutorials and all that, they will still be #1 .

    I also think that this is their competitive advantage. Not better hardware. But consistent support, documentation, software.

    The community, and amount of independent bloggers that keep their posts updated, adds to it.

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