With the Raspberry Pi foundation seemingly prioritizing commercial customers over normal consumers (contrary to their stated goals), I’m just gonna give up hope now of ever having one, and simply get an Orange Pi 5 which is available, and faster. I am happy that they seem to be moving the right direction with things though (fan headers, proper power management, PCIe 3.0 breakouts, etc)
Availability has been improving recently, at least in my country (UK).
While the hardware specs are often more compelling, the problem I find with the Pi alternatives is they usually depend on custom images and kernels. Pi hardware may be less ideal but I feel more confident it will have lasting software support.
Availability has been improving recently because all of the commercial partners were given a heads up that the Pi 5 was releasing and they have ramped down their purchasing of the 4 for that reason. That’s why Ebon Upton, who has no reason to speak up about this stuff, mentioned “Pi 4s will be in stock soon!”…because he was ramping up for the Pi 5 release. He pulled this shit with my hackerspace back with the original Pi. He came, gave a presentation, and the Pi 1 only had 256mb of ram at the time. Sold like 100 pis at that event, promised us nothing was changing, and then a week later, announced that all pis were going to get 512mb free and by default for the same $35 we all paid. He’s a scumbag, and I’ve watched him closely ever since. He hasn’t changed a single bit. In fact, his announcement about Pi 4s being in stock for everyone again soon was my heads-up that the Pi 5 was releasing, so I told everyone to stop buying them that asked me.
With the Raspberry Pi foundation seemingly prioritizing commercial customers over normal consumers (contrary to their stated goals), I’m just gonna give up hope now of ever having one, and simply get an Orange Pi 5 which is available, and faster. I am happy that they seem to be moving the right direction with things though (fan headers, proper power management, PCIe 3.0 breakouts, etc)
Availability has been improving recently, at least in my country (UK).
While the hardware specs are often more compelling, the problem I find with the Pi alternatives is they usually depend on custom images and kernels. Pi hardware may be less ideal but I feel more confident it will have lasting software support.
Availability has been improving recently because all of the commercial partners were given a heads up that the Pi 5 was releasing and they have ramped down their purchasing of the 4 for that reason. That’s why Ebon Upton, who has no reason to speak up about this stuff, mentioned “Pi 4s will be in stock soon!”…because he was ramping up for the Pi 5 release. He pulled this shit with my hackerspace back with the original Pi. He came, gave a presentation, and the Pi 1 only had 256mb of ram at the time. Sold like 100 pis at that event, promised us nothing was changing, and then a week later, announced that all pis were going to get 512mb free and by default for the same $35 we all paid. He’s a scumbag, and I’ve watched him closely ever since. He hasn’t changed a single bit. In fact, his announcement about Pi 4s being in stock for everyone again soon was my heads-up that the Pi 5 was releasing, so I told everyone to stop buying them that asked me.