**Exploring the Possibilities of the Raspberry Pi as a Basic PC Alternative**

In recent years, the Raspberry Pi has gained popularity among tech enthusiasts and hobbyists due to its compact size and versatility. This tiny computer can perform a variety of tasks, from basic computing to more complex projects. In this article, we'll delve into the world of the Raspberry Pi and explore whether it can replace a traditional desktop computer for tasks like browsing Facebook or playing games.

To test the capabilities of the Raspberry Pi, I decided to purchase one and insert the micro SD card that came with it, which was pre-loaded with Raspbian, a distribution of Debian Linux specifically designed for the Raspberry Pi. As expected, if you order a Raspberry Pi without the micro SD card, you'll need to download Raspbian and load it onto your own card for free. I took about 20 seconds to boot up into the Raspbian desktop, which has a gray background reminiscent of Mac OS from the late 1990s.

The Raspbian desktop comes with a simple web browser, console, PDF reader, text editor, programming environments, and even a stripped-down version of Minecraft for those who want to indulge in some retro gaming fun. One thing to note is that this is a Linux environment, which can be a bit challenging for users who aren't familiar with Linux. However, I believe that with the help of online resources, anyone can learn to work with Linux and take advantage of the Raspberry Pi's capabilities.

**Retro Gaming on the Raspberry Pi**

One of the most exciting aspects of the Raspberry Pi is its ability to be used as a retro gaming platform. With numerous projects available online, users can create their own custom consoles using the Raspberry Pi. These tiny machines can run emulators for classic games and provide an immersive retro gaming experience.

I must admit that I was not surprised by the Raspberry Pi's performance in this category. It has consistently excelled as a compact retro gaming platform, and its popularity among gamers is well-deserved. With the right configuration and setup, users can enjoy their favorite classic games on the go or at home.

**Who Can Use the Raspberry Pi?**

So, who exactly can benefit from using a Raspberry Pi? The answer is anyone with an idea for a cool project and the patience to learn how to configure things in Linux. With a little creativity, users can turn the Raspberry Pi into a media server, smart thermostat, or even an electronic bottle opener. The possibilities are endless, limited only by one's imagination.

**Mass Drop's Creative Sound Blaster E3 USB DAC Amp Combo**

If you're looking for another exciting project to take on, be sure to check out Mass Drop's Creative Sound Blaster E3 USB DAC Amp Combo. This product features a built-in microphone, dual headphone outputs, line in, and Bluetooth connectivity with aptX support. The signal-to-noise ratio is an impressive 112 decibels.

The best part? With Mass Drop's Group Buy model, the more people who buy this product, the lower the price goes, thanks to economies of scale. As it stands, this product has already reached its lowest price point, making it a fantastic deal for anyone looking to upgrade their audio setup without breaking the bank.

**What Would You Do with a Raspberry Pi?**

Finally, we'd love to hear from you! What would you do with one of these tiny machines? I have a few ideas up my sleeve that might make it onto the Linus Tech Tips channel in the future. Perhaps you'll share some of your own projects or ideas in the comments below?

**Supporting the Channel**

As always, we appreciate your support and encouragement. If you'd like to see more content from us, be sure to click like, dislike, favorite, and subscribe to our channel. Your feedback is invaluable, and it helps us continue to create high-quality content for you.

In addition to our regular sponsor links, you can also check out the "Support Us" link in the video description to learn more about how to support the channel. Whether it's installing a forum add-on for your browser or changing your Amazon affiliate code, every little bit helps us keep the lights on and bring you more exciting content.

Thanks again for watching, and we'll see you next time!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enif you head out to a restaurant and order a 35 dessert you might expect the waiter to bring you more than just a plain slice of raspberry pie but getting this raspberry pie for the same price might just end up to be a fantastic deal a printed circuit board might not taste as good as a piece of sweet pastry but these little guys are a heck of a lot more versatile with people using raspberry pies as the basis of projects that run the gamut from home security and automation to robotics and even beer making when i found out the raspberry pi 2 had been released i had to put it into action myself welcome to my review of the raspberry pi 2 model b intel's new 750 series ssds utilize the nvme standard providing speeds never seen before on a consumer series storage drive click now to learn more probably the most striking feature of the raspberry pi 2 is how much stuff they manage to cram onto a pcb the size of a credit card you get an soc also known as system on chip that features a 900 megahertz cpu and a 250 megahertz gpu one gigabyte of ddr2 ram on the back of the board and four usb 2.0 ports and a full-size hdmi port that supports audio a 3.5 millimeter stereo jack that actually supports video out through an adapter if you're hooking up to an older tv 10 100 ethernet a micro sd slot for storage and a micro usb port that powers the whole thing you don't get a power cord but a usb wall wart that supports one amp of current should work fine for most users i used a standard one amp phone charger and had no problems although you might want to look into getting something like a charger rated for two amps if you're pumping a lot of juice through those usb ports there's also a couple bits you won't find on your standard desktop motherboard the pi includes connectors for an optional mini lcd display like you'd see on a digital camera like we're kind of filming on now and the optional 25 separately sold raspberry pi camera module which allows you to record 1080p video but probably the most important feature for those of you who really want to dive into a special project is the 40 pin general purpose input slash output usually just called gpio these pins are fully programmable and allow you to control tons of different things with the pie such as thermometers for portable weather stations motors for miniature tanks and rc vehicles and maybe even a wireless door lock etc but before i dove in to try to turn the pie into something uber cool something on the spec list caught my attention the cpu on the raspberry pi is actually the same cpu an arm cortex a7 that's in the samsung galaxy s5 mini just at a lower clock speed with how we use smartphones for lots of basic tasks like watching youtube videos web browsing and listening to music i got to wondering could the raspberry pi 2 especially if it has double the ram and quadruple the cpu cores of the previous model be used as a basic pc could this little 35 computer actually replace a desktop that's just being used for stuff like maybe a facebook machine i was determined to find out so i went ahead and inserted the micro sd card that was included and pre-loaded with raspbian a distribution of debian linux specifically adopted for the raspberry pi keep in mind though that if you order a pie it won't come with that microsd card but you can download raspbian and load it onto your own card for free after first displaying a configuration utility with some basic options such as keyboard layout the pi takes about 20 seconds to boot into the raspbian desktop which looks a little like mac os from the late 1990s gray background the taskbar at the top it comes with a simple web browser console a pdf reader a simple text editor several programming environments and a stripped down version of minecraft in case you want to forget about your project for a few minutes and just play with your wood in things um also a word of warning this is a linux environment and it's a bit of a weird one to boot it may be a bit of a struggle to work with even if you aren't a linux wizard but i believe in you you're a skilled and intelligent person and with the help of online resources you can do this once you're good to go one of the main things people are going to try to do is use the raspberry pi for gaming outside of just minecraft and it does quite well if you're looking for a little micro size retro gaming platform there's tons of projects online for people making super small even sometimes mobile retro gaming machines based on the raspberry pi platform and honestly i'm not surprised as it excels in this category first off this won't really be that good of a pc replacement for people who even just want to use it for gmail and to laugh at some memes the pie has some issues with certain elements on many modern websites and has a steep learning curve for anyone who doesn't have quite a bit of experience in linux so who is this product actually for well basically anyone who has an idea for a cool project and the patience to see it through by learning how to configure things in linux can make good use of the pie plenty of people have gotten their retro gaming consoles completely up and running in a matter of hours and others have even taken it further by building custom cases with joysticks and miniature screens to have a fully functional retro handheld or gaming station but if you don't want to game there are hundreds and hundreds of other uses for the raspberry pi that are limited basically only by your imagination media servers smart thermostats and even electric electronic bottle openers have all been powered by the raspberry pi so if you have 35 bucks burning a hole in your pocket for some reason and you're not in the mood to spend it on dessert it might be worth finding out just what you can come up with speaking of desserts our friends over at mass drop are back with another awesome drop the creative sound blaster e3 usb dac amp combo which features a built-in mic a mic in dual headphone out combo line in bluetooth with aptx support and has a 112 decibel signal to noise ratio and it's available over there for another four days or so of course this product is available through massdrop at a significantly discounted price thanks to their group by model essentially the more people buy the more prices goes down for a set minimum and it has already reached its lowest price point which is kind of awesome and it's about 40 us dollars below the general msrp you can check out this drop and many others in the link in the description or at dro dot ps linus tech tips that link doesn't give us a kickback or anything but it does let them know that we sent you all right guys what would you do with one of these little tiny machines i have a few ideas of my own which might make it onto the linus tech tips channel but let me know in the comments down below over on the forum while you're still here watching this video click like dislike favorite subscribe share anything that you really want that's around the screen those all actually help us in some way or another and don't forget to comment as well if you want a shirt that isn't this one but is more linus media group focused you can look in the description of the video you can also see in the description video a link to buy this little product that's right here over on the forum you can see things in the support us link like changing your amazon affiliate code installing the forum add-on for your browser which can help you see when you get stuff like notifications or pms or anything like that and can also automatically change your amazon affiliate links for you if you enable that from there along with all of our other sponsor links thank you guys for watching and i'll see you next time youif you head out to a restaurant and order a 35 dessert you might expect the waiter to bring you more than just a plain slice of raspberry pie but getting this raspberry pie for the same price might just end up to be a fantastic deal a printed circuit board might not taste as good as a piece of sweet pastry but these little guys are a heck of a lot more versatile with people using raspberry pies as the basis of projects that run the gamut from home security and automation to robotics and even beer making when i found out the raspberry pi 2 had been released i had to put it into action myself welcome to my review of the raspberry pi 2 model b intel's new 750 series ssds utilize the nvme standard providing speeds never seen before on a consumer series storage drive click now to learn more probably the most striking feature of the raspberry pi 2 is how much stuff they manage to cram onto a pcb the size of a credit card you get an soc also known as system on chip that features a 900 megahertz cpu and a 250 megahertz gpu one gigabyte of ddr2 ram on the back of the board and four usb 2.0 ports and a full-size hdmi port that supports audio a 3.5 millimeter stereo jack that actually supports video out through an adapter if you're hooking up to an older tv 10 100 ethernet a micro sd slot for storage and a micro usb port that powers the whole thing you don't get a power cord but a usb wall wart that supports one amp of current should work fine for most users i used a standard one amp phone charger and had no problems although you might want to look into getting something like a charger rated for two amps if you're pumping a lot of juice through those usb ports there's also a couple bits you won't find on your standard desktop motherboard the pi includes connectors for an optional mini lcd display like you'd see on a digital camera like we're kind of filming on now and the optional 25 separately sold raspberry pi camera module which allows you to record 1080p video but probably the most important feature for those of you who really want to dive into a special project is the 40 pin general purpose input slash output usually just called gpio these pins are fully programmable and allow you to control tons of different things with the pie such as thermometers for portable weather stations motors for miniature tanks and rc vehicles and maybe even a wireless door lock etc but before i dove in to try to turn the pie into something uber cool something on the spec list caught my attention the cpu on the raspberry pi is actually the same cpu an arm cortex a7 that's in the samsung galaxy s5 mini just at a lower clock speed with how we use smartphones for lots of basic tasks like watching youtube videos web browsing and listening to music i got to wondering could the raspberry pi 2 especially if it has double the ram and quadruple the cpu cores of the previous model be used as a basic pc could this little 35 computer actually replace a desktop that's just being used for stuff like maybe a facebook machine i was determined to find out so i went ahead and inserted the micro sd card that was included and pre-loaded with raspbian a distribution of debian linux specifically adopted for the raspberry pi keep in mind though that if you order a pie it won't come with that microsd card but you can download raspbian and load it onto your own card for free after first displaying a configuration utility with some basic options such as keyboard layout the pi takes about 20 seconds to boot into the raspbian desktop which looks a little like mac os from the late 1990s gray background the taskbar at the top it comes with a simple web browser console a pdf reader a simple text editor several programming environments and a stripped down version of minecraft in case you want to forget about your project for a few minutes and just play with your wood in things um also a word of warning this is a linux environment and it's a bit of a weird one to boot it may be a bit of a struggle to work with even if you aren't a linux wizard but i believe in you you're a skilled and intelligent person and with the help of online resources you can do this once you're good to go one of the main things people are going to try to do is use the raspberry pi for gaming outside of just minecraft and it does quite well if you're looking for a little micro size retro gaming platform there's tons of projects online for people making super small even sometimes mobile retro gaming machines based on the raspberry pi platform and honestly i'm not surprised as it excels in this category first off this won't really be that good of a pc replacement for people who even just want to use it for gmail and to laugh at some memes the pie has some issues with certain elements on many modern websites and has a steep learning curve for anyone who doesn't have quite a bit of experience in linux so who is this product actually for well basically anyone who has an idea for a cool project and the patience to see it through by learning how to configure things in linux can make good use of the pie plenty of people have gotten their retro gaming consoles completely up and running in a matter of hours and others have even taken it further by building custom cases with joysticks and miniature screens to have a fully functional retro handheld or gaming station but if you don't want to game there are hundreds and hundreds of other uses for the raspberry pi that are limited basically only by your imagination media servers smart thermostats and even electric electronic bottle openers have all been powered by the raspberry pi so if you have 35 bucks burning a hole in your pocket for some reason and you're not in the mood to spend it on dessert it might be worth finding out just what you can come up with speaking of desserts our friends over at mass drop are back with another awesome drop the creative sound blaster e3 usb dac amp combo which features a built-in mic a mic in dual headphone out combo line in bluetooth with aptx support and has a 112 decibel signal to noise ratio and it's available over there for another four days or so of course this product is available through massdrop at a significantly discounted price thanks to their group by model essentially the more people buy the more prices goes down for a set minimum and it has already reached its lowest price point which is kind of awesome and it's about 40 us dollars below the general msrp you can check out this drop and many others in the link in the description or at dro dot ps linus tech tips that link doesn't give us a kickback or anything but it does let them know that we sent you all right guys what would you do with one of these little tiny machines i have a few ideas of my own which might make it onto the linus tech tips channel but let me know in the comments down below over on the forum while you're still here watching this video click like dislike favorite subscribe share anything that you really want that's around the screen those all actually help us in some way or another and don't forget to comment as well if you want a shirt that isn't this one but is more linus media group focused you can look in the description of the video you can also see in the description video a link to buy this little product that's right here over on the forum you can see things in the support us link like changing your amazon affiliate code installing the forum add-on for your browser which can help you see when you get stuff like notifications or pms or anything like that and can also automatically change your amazon affiliate links for you if you enable that from there along with all of our other sponsor links thank you guys for watching and i'll see you next time you\n"