16gb raspberry pi was always weird, even 8gb. It's more just a desktop pc or something at that level - the used pc market has usually been similar vfm when you factor in storage and peripherals.
The pizero2(W) is still very cheap for real raspberry pi stuff - where you just want an OS for some reason instead of esp32.
I was really intimidated by ESP32. Liked RPi, back in the 3b days, because I could comfortably sit in the python interpreter, play with sensor interfaces, and get immediate feedback of what & where I screwed up. Familiarity led me to RPi4 for libreelec and 0w for more sensors.
Recently took the plunge on some ESP32s, though, and, just...wow. I mean, I'm going through esphome, but every sensor and control I've checked is just a couple of lines of YAML away. And low enough power that I'm starting to think about batteries. ESP32 is still pretty intimidating for noobs, but the ecosystem that's grown up around it is fantastic once you get over that hump.
My paranoid concern is that I'm going to buy these $2 ESP32 boards from some unknowable Chinese company, and how could I know if there's an extra, malicious supervisor element added. So, my ESP32 devices live in the 'untrusted' VLAN. They could, theoretically, discover each other and send their sensor data to some nefarious broker, but they don't have microphones or cameras. I don't even see how they could get enough information to discover my physical address, without cooperation from my ISP.
I have a n ESP32 with a thermocouple stuffed down my (gas) oven chimney, so I can tell what temperature it actually is (about 40°F/20°C cooler than the dial).
I have one plugged into an addressable LED matrix, which has yet to get mounted, but will eventually be a closet/dressing light. There's a few places where I'd like a 'normal' warm white light, with the option to switch to a blinding daylight for chores, and maybe a low-light, colorful animated nightlight.
I have a Pi-0w reading temp/humidity/CO2 in a grow tent that's a good candidate for ESP32-ification. I have an air quality sensor plugged directly into a Home Assistant server that could go on ESP32 if I wanted it in a different location. Humidity in the bathroom, with a controller for the bathroom fan is another good candidate.
If I can come up with a good way to put them on battery, with a 6-12 month lifetime, then temperature in the attic, and on the input/output sides of the HVAC would be useful.
They are excellent in the hobby world. It's generally when you need to do a bit of quick logic, an ESP32 can be dropped in to do it. E.g. change the colour of an led depending on a sensor.
They also form the core of a lot of IoT devices. Simple sensors and relays that can connect to WiFi and throw up a simple web interface. ESPhome, tasmota and WLED exist to make this extremely easy.
They are basically the hobbiest electronic multi tool. Powerful enough to do most jobs without bothering with code optimisation. Cheap enough to throw in and leave there.
yes as others have said. microcontroller with decent io and wifi, fairly easy to make web interfaces which is handy.
A step up from arduino and i dont think it eats too much more power if the wifi is used sparingly.
I've got a wildlife infrared camera made off a pi zero.
I reckon if i can switch that to esp32 the battery life might stretch quite a bit - or i can shrink the case to a smaller battery.
raspberry pipico would probably do similar tbf, but i bought like 10 esp32 for cheap. but i'm not quite sure how well they handle the image processing triggering.
There's loads of projects like this that people have done and you can just put them together for a few tens of quid and a few hours of time if you dont have to write the software.
We've got phones with that amount of RAM now so it definitely isn't something just reserved for desktops. I tend to like getting something with plenty resources even if it's unnecessary at the time because it often means a longer lifespan for the hardware...
Did the Pi Pico ever make any headway in the microcontroller space? It looked interesting when it was first announced but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere since.
There are a fair number of third party boards based on the RP2040/RP2050 silicon. Even esphome can target it even though it originally targeted the esp32.
The silicon itself is pretty nice although the original had done problems with deep sleep.
I've been a fan of MASH, an ansible playbook that can host a lot of stuff.
I only have experience with their separate Matrix playbook, but it is super robust and I haven't ran into any problems the playbook couldn't deal with (aside from running out of VM disk space once), so I'd expect this would be similarly good.
I don't think it's ever been so seemingly important to name-drop what language a piece of software is written in than as in the post-Rust era.
It's like "Rust" is some kind of stamp of approval. It's certainly not a bad thing/sign, but it's just a pattern I've noticed. Everything written in Rust is advertised as such, as opposed to other software where it doesn't seem as prevalently prominent.
personally, I find it useful as a crude heuristic for identifying software that probably won't make someone wake me up in the middle of the night because it crashed because of some ridiculous bug caused by the dev doing clumsy ad hoc string parsing or poor null checking (more common than memory safety issues, IME)
There's generally a culture of comprehensiveness and solidity I find lacking in most mainstream programming communities
I can't lie if I didn't say I'm also drawn to software written in Rust, as it automatically has an aura of being fast and "memory safe". But of course, Rust software is not immune to bugs. 😅
I was thinking about it recently. For Linux to compete with Windows in corporate settings it has to offer some very specific functionalities. It has to basically be remotely managed. At one of my previous companies Mac users were not able to use AirDrop or even change the desktop background and screen saver. Linux users still had root level access and could do whatever they wanted because the company didn't have tools to manage Linux desktops. If Canonical is trying to get corporate clients (and I think they are) then yes, they absolutely need to treat their users as if they can't be trusted. That's because corporations don't trust their employees. And it's perfectly fine, just don't use Ubuntu as a personal distro.
“software-properties is an old gtk application essentially focused on deb/apt world. Many of its features are dangerous or too complex for normal users (removing main, enabling proposed, source without specifying what, …)”
First it was Mir, the alternative to X and Wayland. Then it was Unity (notice the name!), yet another desktop environment. Now it's snaps, as an alternative to flatpak.
Are you noticing the pattern? It's always Canonical trying to force some distro-agnostic tool into the Linux community, so other distros start depending on Canonical. Always doing this through unnecessary fragmentation.
To be clear, fragmentation is not always bad. Sometimes it enables people to appease different target demographics; specially in the context of Unity. However the way Canonical does this stinks "we want control!" from a distance.
With that in mind, look at the part I've emphasised. It shows the actual reason why Canonical is ditching software-properties from the defaults: because it wants to press further for snaps, in detriment of .deb packages.
What follows is basically an excuse. I don't think it's actually removing it because "it's too dangerous" or whatnot. However, if anything "this is an excuse, not the real reason" only adds injury, because it shows 1) that Canonical sees no problem misleading the users on why it does something; and 2) the people working there are so detached, but so detached from the userbase that they don't get why this would rub users the wrong way. (It's basically a "you're trash too stupid to not cause itself harm" dammit.)
Ah, by the way: Canonical was always some sort of Apple wannabe.
I like how you phrased it. And it explains well why Canonical is so detached from the userbase, or doesn't care about fragmentation — it's simply that its host target audience is other parasites also corporate.
Mir came about because the people behind Wayland were fucking around for years without making progress. Now that Wayland has actually matured, Mir is a Wayland compositor.
Snaps predate (and do a whole lot more than) flatpak.
Mir came about because the people behind Wayland were fucking around for years without making progress.
This implies the motivation was either one or another. It's both: Canonical saw there was room to push for Mir, because the Wayland project was stagnant.
Now that Wayland has actually matured, Mir is a Wayland compositor.
They saw they lost the fight, and gave up.
Snaps predate (and do a whole lot more than) flatpak.
This does not contradict what I said: even if snaps are older Canonical is still pushing them as much as it can, because it can't control the alternative other distros would rather use (flatpaks). Or the distribution of software using that package system.
1 out of 3 isn’t great. (implied: "two of your examples are invalid")
Nah, 3 out of 3. False dichotomy and red herring aren't enough to discard either example.
But for the sake of argument let us pretend this was a 0 out of 3 instead. The point would still stand, given those are solely examples highlighting Canonical's modus operandi.
Speaking about the third example (Unity) you didn't mention: the situation was rather similar to Wayland: Canonical was displeased with GNOME 2.X, likely predicted 3.0 was going to be a trainwreck (it was), and then did its own thing instead of contributing with another project it wouldn't be able to control.
I think the general Linux userbase is so used to non-profit projects that it forgets Canonical is a corporation, and corporations always seek control.
Someone bought them outright. To be fair about this, what they're doing, at this entity's hands, is treating people like Microsoft and Apple treat their users: like criminals.
Corporations police harder than governments, though.
cm0002 Meh, every distro has its issues, and I don't think the arguments for its removal are insane, although I would prefer it was kept and fixed. I think the only thing I've ever tweaked on that thing are the security and version update settings. Wonder what #ubuntu will set the defaults to.
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