He used Vim and Chromium on the Raspbian Jessie distribution

Jul 5, 2017 02:13 GMT  ·  By

Node.js expert and backend software engineer Pierre-Gilles Leymarie has recently lost his precious MacBook Pro in a taxi in Paris, and since he didn't have any other computer at home, he decided to give Raspberry Pi a try.

MacBook Pro is a powerful computer, running Apple's state-of-the-art macOS operating system, yet Pierre-Gilles Leymarie was using it for coding on his Gladys home assistant based on a Raspberry Pi single-board computer using software like VS Code, Node.js and MySQL, along with some other developer-related tools.

Since Pierre-Gilles Leymarie was very familiar to Raspberry Pi, as it own a few of them at home to hack on his Gladys project, setting up a Raspberry Pi 3 SBC and convert it into a full-featured desktop PC was quite easy to do by installing Raspbian Jessie, an old wireless mouse, a very old USB keyboard, and a 22-inch HDMI LCD.

"What can I do during one week without any computers at home? Wait… that’s not true, I have a computer at home! What about using my Raspberry Pi 3? The Raspberry Pi is clearly a good idea: it’s powerful, it runs Linux, it’s silent. Let’s go for one week on this," says Pierre-Gilles Leymarie in his latest blog post, which he wrote on his Raspberry Pi PC.

Raspberry Pi is just as good as a MacBook Pro for a programmer

As Raspbian Jessie is a Linux-based operating system running Raspberry Pi Foundation's Xfce-based PIXEL desktop environment, Pierre-Gilles Leymarie had to find new alternatives to the programs he used on his MacBook Pro. For example, he replaced VS Code with Vim with the JavaScript plugin.

While he didn't encounter any issues with coding in Vim, the developer found that many tools are very slow on the Raspberry Pi, including UglifyJS, Webpack, and Babel. For web browsing, he used Chromium, which is the default on the latest Raspbian Jessie release, and he turned to the Evernote web app for writing.

In conclusion, Pierre-Gilles Leymarie was very impressed by the speed and usability of the Raspberry Pi 3 when used as a desktop computer, yet he doesn't recommend it for compiling heavy software. For $35 USD and a few peripherals that you might already own, Raspberry Pi is a fine machine, powered by Linux. We keep our fingers crossed for him to find his MacBook Pro!

Using the Evernote web app inside Chromium
Using the Evernote web app inside Chromium
Using an online resizer to resize images
Using an online resizer to resize images

Raspberry Pi 3 (4 Images)

Raspberry Pi 3 turned into a desktop PC
Using the Evernote web app inside ChromiumUsing an online resizer to resize images
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