Raspberry Pi 400

10 views
Skip to first unread message

Tony Crooks

unread,
Jan 21, 2021, 2:29:00 PM1/21/21
to 'Jason Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group
While waiting my turn for the’ jab’ and wanting something different to do I bought a Raspberry Pi 400, a dinky computer in a keyboard with mouse, power supply, HDMI lead and manual. Connect it up switch it on, connect to the Internet, download software updates, and good to go - in my case about 40 minutes. Chromium browser, Libreoffice (MS Office clone), Email, VLC, plus more included. Works pretty well and under £100. Decent WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, two free USB 3.0 ports, and can support 2 TV/monitors at up to 4K resolution.

I’m actually going to try turning into a home server as it has the two USB 3.0 ports. it’s Linux so should be possible.

Anyone else given a Raspberry Pi a go?
50927818-EF1A-44C7-A13B-C92753B8DC4D.jpg

Jason Davies

unread,
Jan 21, 2021, 2:42:20 PM1/21/21
to 'Jason Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group
On 21 Jan 2021, at 19:28, Tony Crooks wrote:

> Anyone else given a Raspberry Pi a go?

I think it's been used a lot in education to teach people about coding
and programming - they are definitely popular! Let us know if you hack
it to run macOS;)

Cheers,

Jason

Tony Crooks

unread,
Jan 21, 2021, 2:57:20 PM1/21/21
to sm...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, 21 Jan 2021 19:42:16 +0000
"'Jason Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group" <sm...@googlegroups.com>
wrote:
I think it has been done - Snow Leopard not Big Sur - predictably runs
like a snail.

Graham Perrin

unread,
Jan 22, 2021, 2:08:53 AM1/22/21
to sm...@googlegroups.com
On 21/01/2021 19:28, Tony Crooks wrote:

Anyone else given a Raspberry Pi a go?


No, although it always interested me so today I began taking Raspberry Pi Desktop for a spin.

<https://i.imgur.com/OiEzMDF.png>, <https://i.imgur.com/YoEwGmE.png>, <https://i.imgur.com/XA5Fdb3.png> … whilst awaiting initial updates, it's nice to find htop included. A little disorienting to not have pointer movement in the console, but I'm not complaining. After a while, the Welcome/update GUI froze <https://i.imgur.com/1zVvrRe.png> with <https://i.imgur.com/sfCiyD1.png> no network traffic so I took a quick look at Chromium (working) then decided to shut down, and perform an installation before attempting updates.

Tony, how do you find the desktop environment?

Tony Crooks

unread,
Jan 22, 2021, 4:19:08 AM1/22/21
to sm...@googlegroups.com
Desktop is sparse. Menu bar at top similar to Mac - lhs has raspberry, chromium, file manager, then tabs for open apps, rhs has clock, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth.
Trash icon on lhs under menu bar, other icons (links are whatever you want on the desktop) under the trash can. All a bit OS7ish. I suspect like most Linux systems it is all very easy to change how it looks and works.

I should have mentioned my acquaintance with LibreOffice comes from needing to access content in ClarisWorks/AppleWorks files. I believe it is the only app that can still do this while preserving formatting (although it has to make font substitutions as you might expect).

Bottom line -  reasonably familiar. The system seems very stable with no crashes to date (and I have overclocked the processor to nearly 3 times the factory setting and it remains stable and cool after several hours of use).

mac98aop

unread,
Jan 22, 2021, 4:26:03 AM1/22/21
to Sussex Mac User Group
Wow, thanks Tony. Sounds really good. Keep us posted on how you get on!

Paul Russell

unread,
Jan 22, 2021, 5:27:27 AM1/22/21
to sm...@googlegroups.com
I bought a Pi 4B a little while ago and set it up with pihole, which filters out ads for everyone on the home network. Works really well. While setting it up it seemed like quite a capable little Linux machine.

Paul

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to smug+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/CAHkKbUDXmAoztmL_6CcZPPwT90q8kzOYDGhKYu_UdjXwE1x-8A%40mail.gmail.com.
<50927818-EF1A-44C7-A13B-C92753B8DC4D.jpg>

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages