Rpi for uni PC?

[XDroidie626]

Okay so I am thinking of using my Rpi for my programming at uni, as I would like to use it for something, and I was wondering what OS and programs I should use?

I am thinking of using a KVM switch so I can jump between both PCs.

Is this a decent choice? I will be doing Java stuff mostly, with some word stuff also. nothing too demanding, I just feel Linux would be better due to the exploits in Java and Linux inherent security.

 

Many thanks!

[jayctech]

I liked using Ubuntu as my OS for programming when I was at uni. It doesn't matter all that much honestly. My main reason for my Ubuntu preference was that I liked their UI and it isn't too heavily depending (for a Linux distro) on you being familiar with the terminal.

[Brenz]

I really wouldn't recommend using an RPi to do your programming work. Compiling and running code will take you ages and just waste your time and you may even need to use software that isn't available on Linux.

 

To give you some examples in my first year at Uni we did mobile app development with Windows Phone which requires Visual Studio. Then my third year Java assignment was to create a sentiment barometer, on my i7 2600 it could process ~100 words a second meaning the 60k word documents we had to use took around 10 mins to complete. I would hate to think how long my RPi would have taken to complete the same task.

[XDroidie626]

Wouldnt mind that Odroid C1 so would a NUC be better suited to my needs?

[jameshumphries47]

Wouldnt mind that Odroid C1 so would a NUC be better suited to my needs?

if i were you just invest in a laptop you can take that to lectures and make note.. 

[Cheesebaron]

I would consider a Radxa Rock as well. Much more power compared to the RPi. At around 59 USD that is one hell of a dev board!

[XDroidie626]

I would consider a Radxa Rock as well. Much more power compared to the RPi. At around 59 USD that is one hell of a dev board!

Problem is that the Radxa is expensive for what it is, compared to something like say a ODroid C1, least with the C1 you could add something like eMMC.

[NeatSquidYT]

Don't use an RPi.

[Nuluvius]

To save time when compiling you'll do better with a quad core as a minimum (physical cores prior to hyperthreading). To cope with an IDE on the scale of Visual Studio (and all of its add-ons) you'll want 4GB RAM as a bare minimum - 8GB is preferable while 16GB would be comfortable. A solid state drive would also be an enormous benefit to both concerns of course.

 

To address your question explicitly then; no a pi will simply not be practical for this kind of thing - even when overclocked. I'd also say that the Odroid mentioned would struggle significantly. While the processor is plausible it's 1GB of RAM is simply not enough. One might get away with some incredibly simple applications but as soon as you begin trying to deal with algorithms, data manipulation/parsing (IO and memory storage) and more complex applications (I'm thinking things written in Java with a GUI) and architecture/design patterns you will be completely SOL. Furthermore don't forget that an IDE will also eat a non insignificant portion of that memory itself (Eclipse, Netbeans & IntelliJ for example). Unless of course you intended to do everything in the terminal which looses its practicality in a surprisingly short space of time - think debugging let alone keeping track of your classes and project structure.