Among the Single-Board Computers, Raspberry Pi is most known to the mass users. Here is a List of Single-Board Computers Which People Often Refer as Raspberry Pi Alternatives. Some of them are far better than Raspberry Pi from pricing point and compliance with Open Source hardware standards. Single-Board Computers are complete computers on a single circuit board, with microprocessor, memory, input/output (I/O) features of a functional computer. Unlike a desktop computer, single board computers often do not rely on expansion slots for expansion. New users must differentiate microprocessor from microcontroller. Arduino UNO has microcontroller, they are boards for programming the microcontrollers from an IDE like Arduino has an IDE. They are mainly for electronics. But Raspberry Pi like microprocesor powered boards can run full operating system.
List of Single-Board Computers : Raspberry Pi Alternatives
We are listing the Single-Board Computers on the market which are really Raspberry Pi Alternatives – they are globally commercially available and has an existent user base. Read more on these webpages :
1 2 | https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Freest#Desktops |
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Not Compliant to Free Software Foundation Rules
Single-board computers are powerful to run a real operating system like GNU/Linux, but that does not mean that all are compliant to the rules of Free Software Foundation Rules. Below listed hardware that does not work without running a nonfree program and very difficult to “correct” them to make fully Free Software rules compatible.
Orange Pi : Official Made in China stuff which costs almost half compared to Raspberry Pi. It is practical to compare the features with Raspberry Pi. It can run OS of Raspberry Pi plus other OS. Here is official website :
1 | http://www.orangepi.org/orangepipc2/ |
banana Pi : Another official Made in China stuff which costs almost double compared to Raspberry Pi and packed with solid hardware features. It is practical to compare the features with Raspberry Pi. It can run OS of Raspberry Pi plus other OS. Here is official website :
1 | http://www.banana-pi.org |
Odroid : ODROID series of single-board computers and tablet computers created by a South Korean company. They are very powerful boards :
1 | http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php |
Olimex : Olimex is manufactured by a Bulgarian company. They manufactures, sells other stuffs too :
1 | https://www.olimex.com |
Intel Galileo, Intel Edison and Arduino 101 : They are in general for slightly different purpose like building IoT stuffs. We are deliberately avoiding them.
1 | https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoard101 |
Somewhat Compliant to Free Software Foundation Rules
Below listed hardware’s some features that does not work without running a nonfree program out of the box but not exactly difficult to “correct” them to make fully Free Software rules compatible.
BeagleBone : It is odd, but most of the known touted “Open Source Hardware” are not certified by FSF. BeagleBone has flaw from that point but can be corrected at software level but
BeagleBone actually better. Currently, the graphics accelerator (GPU) and the video decoding hardware are nonfunctional with 100% free software because they require nonfree blobs. Workaround needed for these flaws needed to make compliant with free software.
Conclusion on Single-Board Computers or Raspberry Pi Alternatives
As you can see, BeagleBone is mostly compliant with rules of free software foundation. Orange Pi and banana Pi are powerful, yet cheaper. Odroid series is packed with power and suitable as web server. From various benchmarking, now has been in “low end”. ODROID-XU4 is just powerful.
