$ cat rpi4desktop.txt Testing a RPI as daily driver desktop Replacing a dead i2700K / Radeon RX580 / 16GB DDR3 temporarily Version 0x01 @sairukau =============================================================================== Expected Use cases =============================================================================== - System administration - ssh (terminal) - remote desktop (remmina) - vnc (remmina) - Web browsing using Firefox (yes i'm a FF user) - depends web browser - IRC - depends ssh - Social Media - depends web browser - Watching Streaming service: youtube, twitch - depends web browser - NFS mount remote fs through automount - Local s/hdd media from dock - performs OK, nothing much to report here - Gaming - not sure how far we'll push this, considr it light-gaming - might consider steamlink to a remote machine (doesn't exist yet) - Wine applications - might have to offload to a remote (pre-existing) windows VM =============================================================================== Setup =============================================================================== RPI4 Dual Head on HDMI Corsair Keyboard/Mouse (RGB :/) - USB Keyboard - USB Mouse Shintaro (powered) USB HDD Dock 3x USBs consumed 2x USB 2.0 1x USB 3.0 Ethernet Bose Quiet Comfort over Bluetooth (not connected yet) 2x 32" FullHD (cheap) TVs - 1x Sanyo (Native: 1920x1080_60) - 1x Dick Smith (Native: 1360x768) Noobs shipped with RPi - Raspbian OS =============================================================================== Changes =============================================================================== OS Changes - Install python3 and set as default - Install ansible The rest is deployed through ansible (locally) Window Manager - XFCE Software $HOME/devel/ansible/raspbian/packages.yaml =============================================================================== Migration =============================================================================== I am looking to migrate from a dead i7 2600K setup temporarily so i'm only going to bring across some previous settings from my old environment - Ansible playbooks - no issue - XFCE - no issues - Firefox - see Usage section - Thunderbird - see Usage section - SSH - no issues - GNUPG - see Configuration section - pass password store - see gnupg - gajim - no issues =============================================================================== Usage =============================================================================== Keyboard/Mouse Intermittent issues on reboot enumerating the USB devices leaves then non-working in the OS works find in recovery mode though. Have to reinsert the devices a few times on occasion. Seems to only on a cold boot the ckb-next software isn't available in the raspbian repo so i'm stuck with idiotic rgb until i see if i can get that build for raspbian ckb-next: https://github.com/ckb-next/ckb-next/wiki/Linux-Installation Screens RPI will only boot with screens configured as - HDMI-1 Dick Smitch - HDMI-2 Sanyo HDMI Text is horrible to read over HDMI on these screens, i knew this going in after experimenting on my HTPC years ago. Normally i run VGA on these screens and tweak the Modelines Have purchased some UGREEN Active MicroHDMI to VGA adapters to test Default Performance Desktop - Laggy and almost unusable with 2 displays - Nothing is accelerated by default Web Browsing - Comes with chromium, i cannot migrate my setup to chromium from FF Audio - Doesn't work through 3.5mm jack (raspi-config), HDMI audio OK Firefox This is an absolute horrible experience, firefox-esr is available this is based on (currently) Firefox 78. Video playback is non-functional, audio cuts out, sites do not function. So for some key complaints - Sites display in the mobile version, can be fixed with a custom UA - Amazon.com does not function on this older browser, can be fixed with a custom UA - Audio works then cuts out and I haven't found a way to restore - Video playback never starts on youtube but did on twitch - Migrating profile across from the desktop release is impossible because the version is too old all profiles needed to be recreated Chromium This is not a browser i'm used too and I can't import my profiles across easily atm but it seems to function OK in general compared with Firefox so its probably a preferable option in the long run Thunderbird - Seems to perform horribly but would not find my existing settings so I need to revisit this - Using imap anyway so i may return to Mutt as my daiy driver VLC - Can playback twitch/youtube streams - Consumes a ridiculous amount of CPU decoding (even hardware accellerated in theory) Storage performance This is over USB 3.0, I haven't completed any specific tests but it seems reasonable enough for general use. Network Performance Works well enough need to do some specific tests, speedtest results are comparable to my desktop results $ speedtest-cli --simple Ping: 16.382 ms Download: 273.90 Mbit/s Upload: 41.90 Mbit/s =============================================================================== Customisations =============================================================================== HDMI This is really specific to my setup being the screens are both different but I and ignoring the EDID of the displays to get them both up on 1920x1080. # vi /boot/config.txt add this line, nfi what the 0xa5000080 represents for this setting atm hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080 Both displays come up at 1920x1080 after this without additional modelines The displays based on the boot issue are mapped incorrectly so I run the following to correct it. $ xrandr --output HDMI-2 --primary --left-of HDMI-1 NB: .xprofile does not run atm so putting it there makes no difference Window Manager I wanted to use XFCE not LXDE so had to configure lightdm to run the session. I know you can configure lightdm to allow user selection but that isn't necessary in this case # vi /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf set the following session-wrapper=xfce4-session I am also testing the display-setup-script influence on the above HDMI layout issue, Python 3 Replaced python2 with python3 ... time to catch up # apt-get install python3 # update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python2.7 1 # update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3.7 2 # update-alternatives --config python =============================================================================== Accelation =============================================================================== Configuring Accelartion There is only the fake kms driver available and i'm not particularly across the vulkan support etc that is supposed to be coming, the rpi foundation really doesn't seem to give a crap about real desktop performance on this device because all the effort seem to be one man shows and not a roadmapped effort. This setup isn't terrible and make a distinct different to performance once completed. These references aren't exactly what i had to do but lets run with it and I'll doco my stuff thereafter, e.g. dont enable 4k support. References: - https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/rpi4-ubuntu-mate-hw-video-acceleration.html Setup acceleration # vi /boot/config.txt Add the following ## 4k support #hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 ## fake kms #dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d-pi4 ## real kms need to test #dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d #dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4 # nfi need to look into it max_framebuffers=2 # memory for GPU, 512 was crap gpu_mem=128 Reboot and test # cat /proc/device-tree/soc/firmwarekms@7e600000/status # cat /proc/device-tree/v3dbus/v3d@7ec04000/status both should return "okay" Configure acceleration in Applications Firefox about:config layers.accelration.force-enabled -> true Chromium chrome://flags Override software rending list -> Enabled VLC Tools -> Preferences -> Video -> OpenGL video output NB: i'm not convinced the fkms driver actually offloads this I was seeing 400% CPU usage on twitch streams in top which is 100% usage on every core =============================================================================== Post Acceleration Performance - fkms =============================================================================== Firefox Video playback starts on youtube and twitch but hdmi audio cuts out pretty quickly VLC As per the accelation config section, i'm not convinced the fkms achieves anything of note here Gaming See dedicated section =============================================================================== Configuration =============================================================================== gpg-agent (for pass) the configured pinentry program wasn't available on the rpi this presented as a "no secret key available" error which is shiteful but a list-secret-keys showed the key for decryption was available and could be confirmed by checking the ~/.password-store/.gpg-id entry Was gnome3, now gtk2 $ vi ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf pinentry-program /usr/bin/pinentry-gtk2 $ gpg-agent kill-agent bye or update-alternatives --config pinentry bluetooth no applet available, not the end of the world but annoying from a desktop perspective # apt-get install blueman pulseaudio-module-bluetooth $ pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover $ mkdir ~/.config/autostart $ ln -s /usr/bin/blueman-applet ~/.config/autostart/ # service restart bluetooth remmina Migrated settings without issue =============================================================================== Gaming =============================================================================== Not expecting anything much in regards to this, most games will not run on arm and Steam is not available for arm but Steamlink is so that may be a possiblity Box86 I've played with this before its an interesting product may investigate whats available here Steamlink Its available for pi and I have a laptop lying around that runs Steam currently Emulation Have a bit interest in emulation performance ??? =============================================================================== Wine Applications =============================================================================== I need to run Clrmame Pro or an equivilent but that may need to be offloaded to an external host =============================================================================== Extra Credit =============================================================================== Just some additional items to potentially test Docker FBNeo Dat infrastructure Might be interesting to see what the performance is of my FBNeo dat pipeline is like on this hardware, it would need to be converted to compile the arm versions to generate the dats Filer A python/mysql based file database that supports external media, againt this will function but the performance should be an interesting test Webcam Logitech C910 Webcam performance