$15 single-board computer - The Pine64 is flexible in that it allows you to choose the operating system you prefer: Android 5.1, Ubuntu, OpenWrt, or Open Hab. All give you access to over 1.7 million apps you may use with your newly created device.
Priced at less than half of what the Raspberry Pi goes for, the Pine64 still comes loaded with features, including a full 64-bit architecture with the capability to run the latest OSes, a quad-core 1.2Ghz processor, 512MB DDR3 RAM, and 4K video output as standard.
For those looking for a bit more firepower and options, there is a Pine64+ available that comes equipped with either a 1GB or 2GB RAM for $10 more and features a camera port, LCD port, and a touch panel port all for $19.
I’d like to wire one up with LEDs and make my own set of flashing lights with different patterns. Would definitely be a challenge. Oh, and a local web server for development.
only problem is that gnu/linux isn’t good for making beats on…the software just isn’t there. maybe bitwig’s ok these days though, not sure.
some kind of MPC style thing could be pretty sick. play to the system’s strengths rather than trying to do a full 96k daw running a ton of plugins and shit.
if you could attach an LCD, a small midi keyboard, and a few midi knobs to a mechanical (typing) keyboard, then combine it with a $50 linux machine running some kind of mini DAW it would be sick.
You don’t really see all of the Linux stuff unless you root your phone. It operates with apps pretty much for everything, so if there is something that you wanted to do, you would need to get an app for that.
So your browser would be an app, any music making software you would need to download an app for. Some are free and some will have a nominal cost.
I have a Remote Desktop app and a tethering app on mine. One of those was the most expensive at $20.
The latest generation of Linux distributions would behave more like Windows if you were using a GUI. You can have multiple browser windows open, multiple programs open.
These would be Linux OS’s such as Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Fedora among many others and there are different desktops like Gnome and Unity.
For enterprise level servers you would think about running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Oracle Linux 7 and OpenSUSE. You can install a GUI on these but they are usually not installed with a GUI to save resources.
These will be operated at run level 3 which is a command line with networking.
that’s a myth…some desktop linux OS’s are (imo) way more user friendly and intuitive than windows/mac. i got my 60-odd-year-old mum using ubuntu 12.04 with basically no assistance.
you can try a million different linux builds yourself for free, give it a go, it’s awesome
