Hi Nathan,

Nathan Moore <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> Have any of you-all considered replacing (student) linux workstations
> with small single-board arm ​systems (eg a Raspberry Pi2 or TI's
> Beagleboard)? In terms of unit cost and power consumption they seem
> like an attractive solution for run of the mill, interactive work. ​

One of my (far too many) open personal side projects is the "Little
Projector Computer".  The idea is to put one of these cheap ARM boards
on every meeting room's projector to allow, among other things, wireless
control of presentations.

As part of LPC, I did a survey of the hardware options that were
reasonably available as of 5 months ago.  My conclusions are here:

  https://github.com/brettviren/lpc#conclusions

For student workstations, I'd forget about RPi2 and BBB (but for
hardware hacking, BBB is terrific).  They are just too limited in terms
of CPU.  Also, eMMC storage is, I feel, required for comfortable
interactive use.  SD is noticeably slower.  Given all the extras needed
to make a functioning workstation (kb, mouse, USB hub, not to mention
monitor) the price differences between the low end RPi2/BBB and
dramatically better ARM boards is negligible.

So, I suggest you look at slightly more costly but much better
performing boards such as what ODroid and Orange Pi have.  I've tested
the OC1 and OP+ which are at the low end of this higher tier.

However, even with them I think it's on the edge if they will make
adequate student workstations.  I found they are not fast enough to
allow responsive browsing of PDF files but some other activities are
reasonably usable.  Eg, LibreOffice presentations, web browsing, text
editing, even moderate software compilation and light/simple data
analysis should not be too painful.

I think you'd be best to get a couple different boards and test them
with the kinds of work you expect the students to perform.

Since PDF browsing is central to making presentations, none of them were
adequate and my LPC project is on hold.  To make it work today I would
need to step up to yet more powerful ARM or Atom PCs in the $100-200
range.  

> Related question, is there a fork of SL/RHEL that comes precompiled
> for arm? 

I dunno, but in general, for some of these boards, there is not yet a
wide support environment.  The RPi and BBB worlds are very good.  The
ODroid world is smaller but still substantial.  The Orange Pi community
is almost non existent (at least back when I was messing with my OP+).
The smaller the community the more limited you will be in terms of
making choices like which distribution to run.

-Brett.