The Raspberry Pi Interactive Timeline · 2006–2026

I know RAM prices aren't under control of the raspberry pi project, but something has gone dreadfully wrong in the economy when individual 8GB+ raspberry pi are now costing $200 to $300 for just the board before you add USB-C power supply, heatsinks, case, etc.

If a person doesn't need GPIO pins or other direct access to hardware [1], I don't understand why people are trying to use them with 1080p and 4K displays, keyboards and mice as general desktop linux computers. You can get a far more capable small form factor or ultra small form factor used Intel Core i5/i7 something corporate desktop with 16GB of RAM and a real SSD for like 150 bucks on eBay (USD). It'll be significantly faster.

Install barebones debian amd64, 'sudo apt install xfce4-desktop', it'll pull in all the xorg and other dependencies and also install a GUI login screen.

20 seconds of searching turned up something that doesn't suck: https://www.ebay.com/itm/820084016851?_skw=dell+optiplex+16G...

The one raspberry pi model which is still close to the original's $35 price is the raspberry pi model 4 1GB which is $49 in Canada. Accounting for inflation and difference between USD:CAD, that's about the same as 35 bucks. I think there are still a ton of uses for raspberry pi 3B+ or model 4 1GB particularly because you can power them off an 802.3af power over ethernet switch and cable, to stick one in a weird place with power and ethernet in one cable, with a basic $15 PoE splitter to USB-C power on the load end. [2]

[1]: https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/rpi-gpio-pins

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/UCTRONICS-PoE-Splitter-USB-C-Complian...

Broke off my Pi 4Bs USB C port when using it to test link speed for new LAN outlets, when I wanted to reorder I realized the 4 GB version is now 120 EUR… Damn.

The Pi makes no sense anymore at these prices. But I love that I got to experience them when they were affordable. I owned multiple 4bs at one point, and even have a 2b and 3b lying around. I have a clusterhat that I tried to setup again, but realized that the Pi0Ws have only 512mb RAM each and that's useless now.