I don’t like the fact that computer hardware always keep the price tag, older models just get obsolete, not manufactured anymore even though it was perfectly sufficient for large population (and still would be) - you just have to buy expensive currently supported model.
So I’m a rebel, buying weird good enough modules to fulfill simple needs. At the moment I’m considering replacing my AMD SBC used as a home TV (I hate TV OSes, so I just use them only as monitor for proper but simple TV-Linux SBC). My complaint about the aging SBC is that often it exposes huge mouse pointer lag, when some ad or video tax the CPU. It has a really good GPU though, Vega-8, capable of A level games. I’m not really sure what’s causing the behavior. It’s my entertainment system, I use it when I’m done with the tech world…
Recently I’ve set some new utilities on Raspberry Pi 5 with NVMe, preatty damn good hardware. However obviously not even remotely sufficient as SBC, at 4k it really struggles with the desktop.
Researching, I came along Radaxa 5B+, looks good on paper, but there’s a few YT reviews telling you that the hardware is really under performing on mainline Linux. It’ll cost about half of Mac mini m4 with the same 16GB ram/256GB disk, if you do a complete assembly (including case, fan, ssd, etc)
Is there some alternative pearl I missed? Honestly I’m thinking about looking for M1/M2 mac mini as my SBC, Asahi Linux runs on it naively.