am I crazy for thinking that the 16GB Pi 5 is just there to absorb money from people who purchase the most expensive version of things? Like really nobody needs that much RAM on a Pi?

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JollySharp0 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I am running a bunch of stuff on my 8GB Pi and I've run out of memory to put more stuff on. I use it as a low power server running a bunch of Docker containers. Some of these require at least 200mb and some use 2G of memory.

I was going to buy a small nuc and load it up on memory but I've acquired an old Mac Mini with 16GB of ram, which will do.

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parl_match 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, you are crazy for thinking that. The extra ram is useful for small LLMs and also running lots of dock containers. The very low power consumption makes it ideal for a low end home server.

I use the 16GB SKU to host a bunch of containers and some light debugging tools, and the power usage that sips at idle will probably pay for the whole board over my previous home server, within about 5 years.

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megous 8 hours ago | parent [-]

You can just as well not run docker. 1GiB machine can run a lot of server software, if RAM is not wasted on having duplicate OSes on one machine.

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zozbot234 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Docker is about containerization/sandboxing, you don't need to duplicate the OS. You can run your app as the init process for the sandbox with nothing else running in the background.

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rtpg 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think that on linux docker is not nearly as resource intensive as on Mac. Not sure of the actual (for example) memory pressures due to things like not sharing shared libs between processes, granted

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JollySharp0 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Containers are not Virtual Machines. 1GB cannot run a lot of server software.

If stuff is written in .NET, Java or JavaScript. Hosting a non-trivial web app can use several hundred megabytes of memory.

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gnabgib 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Only Java qualifies under your arbitrary rules, and even then I imagine it's trying to catch up to .NET (after all.. blu-ray players execute Java).. which can run on embedded systems https://nanoframework.net/

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JollySharp0 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I listed some popular languages that web applications I happened to run dockerised are using. They are not arbitrary.

If you run normal web applications they often take many hundreds of megabytes if they are built with some popular languages that I happened to list off the top of my head. That is a fact.

Comparing that to cut down frameworks with many limitations meant for embedded devices isn't a valid comparison.

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gnabgib 4 hours ago | parent [-]

1GB is plenty for almost every case I've seen, 10-20x the need. Yes if you're running a repeated full OS underneath (hello VMs) then it'll waste more.

I run (regular) .NET (8) in <50mb, Javascript in <50mb, PHP in <50mb. C, Perl, Go in <20mb.

Unless you're talking about disk space.. runtimes take space.

	▲	JollySharp0 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> 1GB is plenty for almost every case I've seen, 10-20x the need Couldn't have seen many then! Maybe you should look elsewhere. > Yes if you're running a repeated full OS underneath (hello VMs) then it'll waste more. Docker is not VMs. Other people have stated this. > I run (regular) .NET (8) in <50mb, Javascript in <50mb, PHP in <50mb. C, Perl, Go in <20mb. Good for you. I run web services that are heavier. The container has nothing to do with it.

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zx8080 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not OS duplication per se, but a SystemD one.

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parl_match 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> You can just as well not run docker.

this is naive

"just as well"? lmao sure i guess i could just manually set up the environment and have differences from what im hoping to use in productio

> 1GiB machine can run a lot of server software,

this is naive

it really depends if you're crapping out some basic web app versus doing something that's actually complicated and has a need for higher performance than synchronous web calls :)

in addition, my mq pays attention to memory pressure and tunes its flow control based on that. so i have a test harness that tests both conditions to ensure that some of my backoff logic works

> if RAM is not wasted on having duplicate OSes on one machine.

this is naive

that's not how docker works...

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throwaway85825 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most Pis are sold for embedded customers, some of which no doubt can use 16gb.

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teaearlgraycold 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s an incredibly lopsided machine. The Pi 5 is decently powerful, but you really really should not be attempting to use one as a desktop replacement. While theoretically possible you are so much better off with a $50 used SFF PC.

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hsbauauvhabzb 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Browsers treat RAM as infinite, if you want to for whatever reason open LinkedIn, you might wanna get a bigger model. I’d personally rather buy more ram than I need rather than deal with the cost of fixing / working around the issue in future

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walrus01 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No you are not crazy. It's silly to try to use a raspberry pi 5 16GB (or equivalent priced product) as a desktop workstation with a GUI on it when much better actual x86-64 based workstations exist. Ones with real amounts of PCI-E lanes of I/O, NVME SSD interfaces on motherboard, multiple SATA3 interfaces on motherboard, etc. In very small form factors same as you'd see in any $bigcorp office cubicle.

	▲	zx8080 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> as you'd see in any $bigcorp office cubicle. Which bigcorp does use cubicles?