It was just over a year ago that there was an incredible buzz over the release of the Pi 400. In 2022, this ARM based computer is still a fantastic device that I highly recommend for just about anyone that wants to projects of any kind. I was late to the party in adding the Pi400 to my “cubicle” but better late than never. The Pi400 hearkens back to the age of the personal microcomputer from the 1980s where the keyboard and motherboard are contained in one device with the business end of the machine on the back side of it.
I have an almost unhealthy obsession with the openSUSE project and absolutely adore this Raspberry Pi. Putting together the fun, flexibility, ease of management and reliability of openSUSE with the low cost and highly capable hardware seems like the absolute perfect combination.
openSUSE is touted as the “makers choice” distribution and many makers out there love Single Board Computers like the Raspberry Pi. The combination of a makers’ choice distro and a very common SBC used by makers seems like the perfect fit.
The question I am setting out to answer is, “How well does it openSUSE?”
As a follow up to this blathering from a few months back, I decided to do a video and further develop my thoughts on the subject.
Additional software and settings for the Pi400, see this page.
YouTube
Rumble
Odysee
Final Thoughts
openSUSE Tumbleweed provides a full-fledged, desktop Linux experience that is on par with a modern x86_64 machine, certainly not as fast but a great experience. The Pi4/400 makes for a great base to do all kinds of testing and playing with technology and is a great educational tool.
To answer the question, how well does it openSUSE as a general computing device? I give it 4.5 out of 5 Geekos. To give it a 5/5, someone, maybe me, has to put together a meta package or something to easily install all these extra bits.
References
Raspberry Pi 4 on openSUSE
https://en.opensuse.org/HCL:Raspberry_Pi4
https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.raspberrypi.rpi-imager
I confirm. Pi 4 (8Go RAM) + openSUSE Argon 15.3 does well. This is a perfect backup solution in case my desktop PC is broken. Perhaps in future with 2 NVME storage sockets this will be my PC.
It’s pretty amazing what such a small device can do. I greatly prefer Tumbleweed over the default OS, it just feels right.