Unfortunately, I had a period when I had to say goodbye to my laptop. At least, I have a Rasberry Pi 4 model B and I thought what if I could replace my laptop with it. In this article I will write about my experience.
Operating system
Those who have dealt with Rasberry Pi to some extent know that there are many different versions of the factory operating system. I happened to install the 64-bit full version. It may be less stable and slower than the lite version, but I thought that my Rasberry Pi 4 could handle it and, after all, I mostly use a browser for programming. By that I mean using an online IDE like Replit. I like its user interface, but using a black theme makes it buggy. I missed the buttons.
Browser
I knew that my Rasberry Pi wouldn’t be able to handle my 1 TB React projects, but I might be able to set up a development environment online in a browser. I used it a lot for browsing, and my view is that loading more complex websites is a serious problem. For example, if Discord and Youtube are open at the same time, it freezes and I can restart it.
Development environment
Although it has Python and Java installed by default, it is quite difficult to use libraries and frameworks. I really miss Android Studio and Visual Studio. For me, since I’ve only been using the Rasberry Pi, my programming skills have been in a steep decline. But since Python ran smoothly, I have become quite professional in it.
Overheating
When you use a laptop, you can still feel the heat of the processor. A laptop, on the other hand, has a fan and all kinds of heat-dissipating stuff. I didn’t put this on the Raspberry Pi, so it glows at an average of 70-80 degrees while I’m using it. It’s just put on my shelf like a proletarian and a display is just connected to it. I think it’s a huge problem with Raspberry Pi 4s that they heat up quickly. Every time I use it, I risk setting the house on fire and the integrity of the circuit.
Conclusion
In my opinion, a Rasberry Pi can replace your laptop if you use it for editing a few documents or just to learn linux. Although it is strong enought compared to its size, it can provide only about as much performance as a low budget phone.
