Executive summary
Yes, you can. And not only it is doable, but it is actually good fun! The Pi’s are fully useable as student terminals, allowing students to do much more than just ssh-ing to the servers : they have a fast and responsive local environment with chromium, libreoffice, molecular graphics, any programming language they want, R & R-studio, etc. Having said that, the students using them must not be in fear of doing some system administration now and then (but with a carefully prepared image for the microSD card, even this will be very rare). All-in-all, this is a loud and clear go from my side (and at the present time).
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| The Pi at full throttle. Overview of four workspaces shown with molecular graphics, libreoffice writer, a tmux session, and a browser. |
The long story
Introduction
So, I decided to buy a Raspberry Pi 5. Not sure why. Probably to have a new toy to play with during the Christmas vacation. This turned-out to be a good choice: the Pi is very good fun, and I still enjoy fiddling with its settings and making it look like a proper linux machine. There were some minor issues, like a difficulty in finding suitable adaptor for micro HDMI, or -the several- issues with Wayland/Xwayland (more on that later), but the final verdict is very positive : Pi is nice and useful as a desktop environment, the hardware looks stable and the software dependable (but it is too early to say), and at 3W power consumption at idle (and 12W under full load), it will make the university happier. Actually it is so nice and the desktop experience so smooth and responsive, that I am seriously thinking about moving it to my desk at the office.
Hardware things
Not much to say here. The things I should mention are : (a) The Pi’s micro HDMI port is a bit difficult to work with, and you have to think whether you want to buy an adaptor or a fixed cable. (b) The official Pi.com case is not very good at cooling the Pi, maybe the official ‘active cooler’ is better and cheaper. There are also these ‘cases’ with double heat sinks and double fans for the fanatics. (c) It would be nice if your monitor comes with speakers, otherwise you will need either a USB- or a bluetooth-based set of speakers/headset/earbuds. (d) The ‘disk’ is a microSD card. My understanding is that this is the weak link hardware-wise. MicroSDs are not made for 24/7, you probably need a high-end model and properly scheduled backups to be on the safe side.
Software things
The Pi comes with Debian 12 (Bookworm), so everything works out of the box, except Wayland/Wayfire. I suffered considerably with the move away from X11, but in retrospect most of it was due to the complete absence of any familiarity from my side with the configuration of wayland and friends. Eventually we did reach an equilibrium and I am happy (for now ?), but note that some things like camera support and video-conferencing have not been tested. The Xwayland part (offering support for pure X11, non-wayland, apps) is not exactly a true substitute for a proper X11 server, and I even ended-up re-writing some code for two of my ancient programs which were using Ygl (an IrisGL-like X11-based substitute for GL) to make them run as fast as they do under X11. Having said all that, I do not regret staying with wayland : I learned things, and wayland appears to be faster and smoother and ‘fancier’ that X11. There are things that bug me, like the absence of a focus-follows-mouse setting (you need to find/build the extra plugins for wayfire to make this work), but all-in-all it looks good now. I suppose that someone with fewer preconceived ideas and expectations could have used the defaults happily and never experience any issues, but this was definitely not the case with me.
Tests in a ‘production’ environment
The Pi passed what I consider to be an acid test for a new desktop machine : log-in onto it, and try to work normally while using it for dealing with whatever happens to come along during a typical day at the office. I have been happily using it for several days now, and only occasionally did something needed to be installed/configured. The general feeling I got is that of using a normal fully-setup modern linux machine on a hardware that is up to the task.
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| A workspace with too many windows open. This is from an analysis performed remotely via ssh. |
Cost estimates
It looks like you are better off buying a kit and then add to it if needed, instead of buying the parts one-by-one. For example : buying separately the 8G model + the official Pi case + the official power supply costs 123.90 euros (incl. VAT). Buying this kit costs 124.90 euros, and you get (for the same price) the 8G model + the official active cooler + the official power supply + a HDMI ⇒ MicroHDMI cable + the (cheap-ish) ABS case + a Sandisk Ultra 32GB MicroSD (with pre-installed the OS). If 32G is not enough, you only have to buy a larger/better MicroSD card, attach a keyboard and a mouse, and you are good to go.
So, even if I add 30 euros for an extra MicroSD card + a set of wireless keyboard/mouse, we reach a total of ~155 euros for a complete ready-to-go Pi box. Add ~90 euros for a cheap 23" monitor with speakers, and you end-up with a grant total of ~250 euros for a complete Pi-based student terminal. Now : For 190 euros, you can buy a cheap chromebook with 11" display, two cores, and a 32G disk. But I can hardly imagine running e.g. pymol on a 11" display. I am writing this on a chromebook in vim and it is fine for that usage. But the chromebook is not a suitable device for molecular graphics, or having 5 windows open from an analysis of a molecular dynamics trajectory. To conclude this section : if you already have the monitor plus keyboard/mouse —and the 32G MicroSD is acceptable— you can buy a proper desktop machine with 125 euros, which is probably unbeatable. Even if you have to go for the full set, I doubt that you could find an as smooth and responsive machine with 250 euros.
Conclusions
The Raspberry Pi 5 is not a toy-like hardware suitable only for kids learning computing. It has sufficient resources to make a useful everyday terminal for college students as well. The Pi is ideal for writing code, testing it, and then deploying it to the servers for the production run. With the 8G model, you can easily have 4 workspaces loaded with a browser, a local tmux session, a remote session with X11 apps running an analysis, a local diary/journal for taking notes, etc., and with all those apps running, the responsiveness of the Raspberry remains essentially unaffected. You will, of course, not do your heavy computing on the Pi, but this is also true for all terminals we currently use. And with a price tag of 97€ for the 8G model, replacing a broken terminal comes as close to a walk in the park as you’ll ever get. Add the 3W power consumption at idle, and there you have it : a functional solution for light academic computing that is also light on the budget and also light with its environmental footprint. The way I see it, the only thing remaining to be seen concerns the robustness of the Pi : our classical PC-based student terminals can easily pass the 5 year mark, and we have several that have passed the 10 year mark. For the Pi to be useful, it should at least approach the 5 year mark. Replacing MicroSD cards every couple of months would definitely take the fun out of it. Time will show …
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