I just want the Manjaro Arm to not fizzle the gui's and run Firefox at speeds faster than 1980s era internet...
Or any desktop distro, even gnome or ubuntu
I blame the modern web for this
Remember when if your aunt wanted you to build her a computer that she'd only use for "web browsing", that meant you could opt for the cheap components?
I fully agree with the author but I was shocked when I saw iPhone 6S. Things were bad even back then?
back then
Fuck am I old??
Things haven't been the same since web 1.0 came out
Last year, I got myself a new Camera, a Lumix S5, and after uploading some photos to DeviantArt (I have had the same account for almost 20 years) and browsing my gallery I realized that I had had enough.
It was so slow and annoying to work with.
So I sat down and started work on a simple webpage that I could host on a normal webhost.
And I built a nice index page in HTML/CSS, and then used photo albums generated by digiKam for the photo albums.
It loads fast, it is easy to navigate, fairly easy to update, and the photo albums can be navigated with arrow keys or swipe gestures.
I am considering writing a blog UI for me to be able to make a simple blogging page, I'll still write it in static HTML/CSS, so I'll have to write every blog entry in HTML as it stands now, but I'll keep looking for easier alternatives
Word. I often complain at work how programming and programmers seem to take "computing resources are cheap" as "USE FUCKING EVERYTHING". There is fuckloads of bloat and web frameworks that are somehow marketed as "lightweight" despite making everything, even the development speed, worse in nearly every aspect.
Video playback is a wholly different thing, tho, because of all the encoding/decoding that keeps file size down.
Ah yes, the programmer curve.
But they should. Or at least comparable.
Think about the difference between Reddit and Lemmy. They both offer similar functionality, but Reddit will set your phone on fire if it gets the chance.
The same is true for YouTube. Browsing YouTube is scrolling through an image gallery, only video playback should be a problem. Yet, it will consume more resources than a well equipped laptop had when YouTube was launched. That's insane.
We're moving in a direction where computers get faster and faster, but for the last 10 years or so, the actual utility of the system as a whole stagnated. Besides games, what can a modern computer do, that a 2014 model couldn't?
You think it's bad now? Wait until ChatGPT is the one coding things.
Modern hardware allows for bloat, and so bloat is made. Add in a huge helping of tracking everything you do, and you get a shit pi.
Now repeat but also mess up the code some more.
Behold: the true Web 3.0
I am interested to see how people will use chatgpt along with reinforcement learning and brute force to optimise code
It isn't a a web problem. The experience is the same for any video playback on a RPI
Yeah, it's amazing how upvoted the previous comment is. Just a bunch of idiots jumping on the web-hate bandwagon when even basic media players like Kodi have a tough time playing back video on the Pi.
It just isn't a very optimized device for video playback. The Pi 5 is actually a step backwards as well, providing only H265 hardware video decode which the web doesn't even use.
all Linux distros
This is not a Linux problem; Windows 10 would fare way worse. Maybe similar on a Pi 5, I've seen a review and it handles Full HD on either OS (only Linux can get consistent 1080p60 though).
Pi 5 can run windows?
Yes but why would you? You'll need active cooling just doing basic things on the desktop.
There’s hardware video encoding/decoding support. I used a Pi3b+ to transcode video for a while and would easily get 2x or better on full 1080p video. The 4 is better and I’ve heard even better on the 5, but I’ve not had a compelling reason to spend that much to find out.
Yes.
Everything you say is correct.
I have a 4B, with 4 gigs.
Everything is logical.
Yet I've still been unable to achieve that despite trying multiple distros. Only Android of all things has successfully played YouTube (via smart tube) and video without any issues. I've also yet to see video evidence of smooth playback aside from one person on YouTube (Computers Explained I think), and it was only on Raspberry Pi OS. Which in fairness I kinda do too, but it takes like 12 seconds average to load a webpage on their version of Firefox (no added extensions) and either 5 or 30 on Chromium for some reason.
I've been trying to set the Pi as a htpc (that's not a lobotomized Kodi box) that can also do minor streaming and a few other things, for 5 days and counting. I made a nice click friendly desktop with Manjaro KDE for Pi, and the OS itself is snappy and fast. But any major video graphical elements and it becomes a geriatric Commodore 64.
I know (read:guess) it must be that something going wrong with hardware acceleration, but just can't figure it out. Maybe my Pi is cursed.
Even on the Pi 5 the basic desktop environment in RPI OS with hardware acceleration working feels sluggish. I'm not sure if it's some weird power savings thing, but the pi just drops frames whenever it feels like it.
The RPi 5 SoC does not have VP9 hardware decoding which is necessary for YouTube videos. Anything above 1080p30 inside a window will suck.
Weird part is that RPi4 SoC has it.
Edit: confirmed by Raspberry Pi Foundation themselves, only hardware video decoder is HEVC.
Some tips:
Also gnome is a desktop environment not a distro
My experience is similar. I don't play YouTube videos on my 4B with 8GB of RAM very often. When I do, I make sure it's well less than a quarter of my 1920x1080 screen. (I use a tiling window manager, so I usually just make my browser window the top-left quadrant of my screen and don't theater-mode or anything.) And I often reduce the quality to 480p or whatever.
If I'm going to watch something longer than a few minutes and want to be doing other things on my Raspberry Pi while the video is running, I'll just pull it up on my phone propped next to my monitor.
The issue is trying to run a video in Firefox. Modern web browsers consume a lot of resources. Also they don't use your hardware efficiently for video playing. You need to take some time to set up a native video player application to play YouTube videos. This better uses the SBC hardware acceleration without wasting precious resources.
Use your operating systems software installer to Install the latest versions of smplayer, smtube, and mpv. Use smtube to select a YouTube video. This sends the network stream URL to smplayer which detects its a YouTube video and downloads the latest yt-dlp to help stream it. If everything is up to date, it plays great.
Not all OS keep their software up to date. Some prefer older stable packages. So its important to use a OS that keeps this software updated. I know for sure MX Linux works with its default software repos out of the box. Its available for Pis, though I have not personally installed on a PI.
Once you get YouTube videos playing, go into settings of smtube to change the web page from tonvid to a custom invidious instance. Pick one thats ideally from your country and that lets you register an account. That way you can import subscriptions and personalize stuff.
Hiccups when using smtube to load an invidious site: the default language will be some foreign language. Make sure you know how to go to settings in invidious and change to english. To load the video click on small youtube icon bottom right of video.
I have revived lots of old PCs over the years. Giving them a new lease on life with up to date linux operating systems for friends and family. I have a 15 year old laptop that was finally having a hard time running latest linux mint xfce. This week I got to work reviving it.
I gave mx linux a shot as I liked ExplainingComputers review of the OS and thought it good fit for my use case. Installing these programs right from MX's software repositiories was a breeze. Youtube played effortlessly! MX is pretty minimal and im sure most pis can run it okay, so give it a shot if you want a OS with up to date repos for these packages if youtube is one of your main concerns.
I use ash btw
I recently dipped my toe into Linux with a raspberry pi and couldn't figure out why Firefox was so laggy. I thought maybe I did something wrong.
Well it's refreshing to see I'm not the only one
You need a machine with a functional GPU
Try it in a vm if you don't want to install it on bare metal (that isn't a raspberry pi)
You can also find cheap ass second hand laptops on ebay for similar prices to pis but should have much better performance, especially if you're willing to do some upgrades like installing a cheap ssd instead of the hdd.
Raspberry PIs don't have a proper GPU with decoding. That's part of why they stink. The other issue is that they are locked to the Raspberry Pi kernel. They are absolutely proprietary!
YouTube serves VP9 video (and more recently a lot of AV1) and I think the Pis only have hardware accelerated decoding of H.264/5 as it stands today
You just need a program that actually supports the hardware video decoder. I've played 30-40mbps bluray rips on a Raspberry Pi 1B without any issues in kodi. The video played smoothly with no frame drops. The user interface was very sluggish though.
The GPU and video acceleration on the Pi is weird, so software has to be built specifically for it.
Actually, Kodi did work well, yes.
It's just that I really dislike Kodi for the purposes I wanted to use the Pi for 😅
Even the YouTube made for it worked (although the interface is... Well, it's an interface).
It's still a plan D, in case can't get anything else to work
If only it were open
I guess we can't have a non proprietary open Linux computer
I would still eat that
I'm considering it too, unfortunately
I’m going to the store to buy a pie now
I'm running an all the mods 6 Minecraft server on my pi 5 with zero lag
No idea how video performance is but it's got a dedicated GPU so supposedly better.
Booting from an NVME, official heat sink/fan and proper power supply
How many players do you have on it at once and do you leave it on 24/7? Might use mine for that
I run OSMC on a Pi 4 and it plays h.265 & h.264 videos at 1080p and h.262 at 576p just fine.
Huh. I use a Raspberry Pi 5 as a media center PC running Kodi / libreelec.. Literally all it does is play videos and music. Even 4k h.265. This meme makes no sense to me.
Let me know if you find a fix. I'm trying to stream 3 of my cameras to the Synology surveillance GUI, and it's a fucking slideshow. I get a few frames a minute.
Gonna try the same thing on an orange pi
Hint: :q!
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