As I recall, the forum does not look kindly on maligning Windows OS, so I will choose my words carefully. When my desktop's Win 7 OS went out of (standard) support around early 2020, I had been dual-booting to Linux Mint, and gradually had moved my desktop tasks over to Mint. All but scanning - my Epson scanner had come with software that worked on Mac and Windows, and worked better than Xsane on Linux. So for a bit I only booted into Windows when I was scanning stuff (old photo prints, negatives, slides, and everyday documents to PDF). But in time, Epson released a Linux driver that, while not quite as full-featured as what originally came with the scanner, it's pretty good, and further tweaks to images could be done in other software.I do wonder, though, whether anyone in the US actually does use it for "desktop tasks". Yes, I know this is contrarian and yes, my focus is US-centric. I understand things are different in Europe (and elsewhere).
It just sesm to me that if you are doing traditional "desktop tasks", just use Windows. Everything will be a lot easier.
I say this as a big fan of Linux who rarely uses Windows these days, but I use it when I wan to do traditional things.
I've always seen the RPi as a tool for non-traditional tasks. It works well at that. Very well, in fact.
Along my Win-to-Lin journey, I played with the Raspberry Pi and tested how much of my ordinary desktop tasks could be replicated on them. Again, I found that I could do it all, save for what proved to be the temporary shortcomings of scanning. Well, I'd also add that youtube playback was always choppy in the 3B/3B+, and it took me awhile to understand that to maximize the Pi's video playback ability, one didn't run YT in a browser but played videos locally or even with a dedicated OS setup like Kodi.
While I have not moved to the Pi as a daily driver (meaning, my default home computer), I have long explored the possibility and even prepared somewhat for the eventuality, having designated whatever my fastest Pi was as a backup PC for my aging Intel/AMD hardware (a 14 yr old desktop and 10 yr old laptop). As mentioned upthread, the fastest Pi (which I've not bought yet) is now arguably faster than my desktop for my everyday tasks ... suggesting it might be, for me, an upgrade as a daily driver. I think it's an upgrade over the laptop too (an i5-4210U CPU). So I definitely have my eye on it, and have noticed that Micro Center (USA) finally is showing PSUs for the Pi 5 in stock. So I may go get one next time I'm near a Micro Center (probably just a few weeks).
Statistics: Posted by cspan — Sun Apr 21, 2024 12:39 pm