Qwen3.6-35b-a3b at 64k context runs quite well on my 12GB VRAM GPU with MoE partially offloaded to CPU. It does use a good chunk of system RAM too, but I get about 40-50 tok/s.
I really struggle to see where this fits in to most use cases. The appeal of the Pi back in the first iterations was being a relatively cheap linux computer with GPIO.
I have decided that the Pi4 1GB is the ideal for hobbyists. Faster than Pi3, takes normal USB-C charging, and can do most single server or electronics jobs. Which is why it is currently sold out.
I agree...
I use a Pi4B 8GB as a home server with a number of duties.
Less power consumption than the Pi 5 (and no heatsink), and it was the first to offer the combination of USB booting, more than 1GB RAM, and Gigabit Ethernet. And reasonably priced in 2019.
I really wish they made a new Zero that doesn't use ddr2 ram to ensure that it can still be made far into the future. As far as I'm aware, nobody is making ddr2 anymore
The original vision IIRC was to provide a cheap computer for students in low-income families. You could plug into your TV at home and start learning.
Then the hobby community got wind of it and proceeded to buy out all the stock on every release (myself included, I still have one of every first 3 versions sitting in my cabinet)
At this stage I think the way to realize this "cheap computer" vision is in unlocking smartphones. Either with an OS that behaves like a real computer that you can put on an old/cheap commodity phone, or with an app that creates a programmable environment layered over and isolated from the suffocating mobile OS.
"an OS that behaves like a real computer that you can put on an old/cheap commodity phone": https://postmarketos.org/
"an app that creates a programmable environment layered over and isolated from the suffocating mobile OS": Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) on newer Android versions provides a hypervisor and a hardware-accelerated graphics (VirGL) for AVF virtual machines, allowing users to run an isolated Linux GUI desktop with low overhead.
There is an unbelievable amount of e waste created because OEMs locked the software down and stopped updating it. I have an android tablet which is functionally working but effectively useless.
The 80s kid in me still thinks dropping someone into a linux shell with a bunch of tools and no internet access is the best learning environment. Kids these days with their fancy tiktoks and such need to summon the old ways.
The 80s kid me lived in a small town with no access to technical manuals or people who could help. The developer manuals for $80 each or a compuserve account to get access to the source code examples of the manufacturer were completely out of reach. What could I have built with the information that is now available for free...
> What could I have built with the information that is now available for free...
Probably nothing. That free info also comes with YouTube and TikTok and every TV show and movie and game on demand. You have to be very disciplined to focus on difficult topics in a sea of easier and more gratifying entertainment.
The concept of a cheap new computer like an RPi for poor families is a 1st world solution that doesn't understand markets. Used computers are way more popular in countries where the price of new computers are out of reach.
In 2014 I bought a used RM desktop PC for my parents for £50 from eBay, which came with the tower, keyboard, mouse and all cables. I had an old monitor laying around, but again, easy to pick up if needed. They still use it today.
RPis get sold more to the businesses and startups that started with them in 2010s, rather than hobbyists now.
If you cannot negotiate a good deal with the big industrial silicon manufacturers but you want good up-to-date kernels, RPis are a perfect option.
There are SoMs or SBCs with other CPUs like NXP or MediaTek that has more or less mainline support. However, they ask more money. The kernel contributions are also a bit on the shakier side which requires spending expensive developer time to deal with kernel issues that the CPU and the board manufacturer missed.
There are also lots of cheaper SoMs if you're not allergic to Chinese chipsets, and the cheaper ones tend to have PoP on-package DDR so you can spin your own 4-layer PCB without having to pull your hair out impedance matching DDR3+ traces. That, of course, if you can fit into ~64MB RAM.
> The kernel contributions are also a bit on the shakier side which requires spending expensive developer time to deal with kernel
NXP/i.MX are way better at mainline kernel than Broadcom that RPi is based on, come on.. and they have cheaper options like i.MX 9 series. Other vendors, yes, mainline support could be pretty spotty.
You should really look at the Pi Zero 2 W. Similar capabilities to the 3B for <$20. The Pico 2 is also cheap and very capable if you don't actually need Linux. Most projects don't need a Pi 5.
Yeah that's why I have so many ESP32-S3's around, no project I've done actually needs Linux and the boot times and SD card problems that come with using a Pi.
The value and capabilities of ESP32s are incredible. Most projects I see that use Linux to drive a GPIO would be better served by an ESP32 almost every time. They can even be coded using Arduino, and LLMs can produce Arduino code easily. The boot instantly, consume extremely little power, and are so small they make even a PI Zero look like a giant brick.
It's useful if you need GPIO but not $350 useful. Nowadays you can get used office mini PCs with a 10th gen Intel and 16GB RAM for like $200 and they'll come with an SSD. No idea why anyone would buy an expensive Pi.
And GPIO support for your used office equipment is often just a cheap USB adapter away too, GPIO support is not some Pi exclusive thing, even if its 40 pin layout is widely used now etc.
Sure, but none of the hardware peripherals routed out to those pins are exclusive to that pin header.
If you need a few i2c or SPI or uart buses or even just general purpose IO then AliExpress has a gazillion little USB based modules that will get you exactly that.
If you're still very new to electronics and not at all comfortable going outside of well-established curriculum that explicitly says use this raspberry pi with this sensor attached on these pins with this library configured in this way... Yes. But that can't be most of the people paying this price?
What are you wanting to use it for? There is using Pi as desktop, which was only option for a while, but now mini PCs are much better. There is using it as server, where mini PCs are better for homelabs and multiple services but Pi is good for lightweight single service. Then there is hobbyist use, where Pi is cheap when get lightweight one and has ecosystem of hardware and software.
This effect plays around again and again. Someone makes something for the public good, and corporations show up and take advantage of it. Basically the story of FOSS too, when you think about it.
For what it's worth there are a few of these in development but they are not ready for mass commercialization yet. Actual serious battery companies working on 3D printed solid state batteries that is, with actual real scientists. My interest has been entirely selfish. I want batteries that are lighter and will outlast my tools. I also want everything to have snap on or slide in batteries instead of being sealed in and not user serviceable.
- You can do Shift+Enter to get a `br` without breaking the paragraph.
- You can change the format from "Paragraph" to "Body Text" to remove the margin. Note that Thunderbird changes new lines back to "Paragraph" automatically, so you need to frist write your email, then format it as "Body Text".
- Or, you can disable the "Use Paragraph format instead of Body text by default" option in the settings, to always have "Body text".
I've always wondered why HTML editors tend to work this way (Wordpress is the same), instead of having a single enter key be a line break and a double enter key be a paragraph.
Thunderbird does have a plain text mode, and you set it to be the default. Nice thing about TB is that defaulting to plain text doesn't lock you into plain text like a lot of other editors out there--If you add any formatting it silently switches you to HTML email.
It's useful on lower RAM systems as the least frequently used memory can be moved to swap, freeing up more RAM for stuff that needs it. Even when using zram it works out pretty well on my laptop with 8GB of RAM, it'll often have 4GB+ in zram swap space compressed down to only 1GB or so of physical RAM usage.
It's easy enough to 'offline' swap space on Linux normally so I suspect that would work fine, as long as you didn't instantly run out of RAM when doing so.
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