I don't think I'll be able to replace my daily driver computer yet, but does anyone have any regular experience with RISC-V computers and where they're at right now? I'm considering buying some RISC-V boards from Pine64 just to try it out.
Depends on what you expect to do with it. A bit of faffing around with the Gentoo repository tells me that they've convinced KDE5, Firefox, Libreoffice, GIMP, and a few other useful pieces of software to build, but not Chromium, Thunderbird, etc. So maybe somewhere between a Pi and a Chromebook, in terms of usefulness?
The nice thing with Raspberry Pi is that they have been around for a very long time, you know what you get, and software support is quite reliable. Even years later, you can still get new distributions for older devices. That's all really useful, when you want to build a device that needs to run for a couple of years.
At this point, I will buy either a CM4 or a Zero2W depending on my specific needs -- and assuming I can hunt it down. Availability is still rather spotty, but has been improving considerably in the last couple of weeks.
RISC-V single-board computers can't quite compete on the same level. It simply isn't clear whether a board that you buy today will still receive support six months from now. And performance or price isn't really a compelling factor either. There are plenty of ARM-based non-Raspberry single-board computers that outperform any of the RISC-V offerings. And they probably have a better track record as far as long-term support is concerned, but not as good as Rapberry Pi solutions.
The reason to buy a RISC-V board would be for you to gain experience with this technology. But honestly, the ISA matters very little. It'll look just like any other Linux system, with maybe a few gaps in what is supported.
Now, long-term, I am quite optimistic about RISC-V and expect that it'll push ARM out of the market for these type of devices. But for the time being, there is very little reason to switch just yet.
Add comment