One Month on a Raspberry Pi 5

Posted on 25/05/05 in Developer Life

Tags: raspberry-pi, distraction-free, productivity, linux

About a month ago the desktop was swapped for a Raspberry Pi 5 as the daily driver. The goal was to trade raw power for focus and see what happens to output when the environment gets simpler.

Setup

Raspberry Pi 5 with 16 GB RAM
NVMe SSD on PCIe
4K monitor driven at 1080p for readable text and single task focus
Basic keyboard and mouse
Raspberry Pi OS 64 bit
This was a deliberate choice to create a focused environment, not a budget build.

Daily experience

General use

For browsing, documents, email, and light multitasking the Pi 5 is solid. Plenty of RAM and NVMe storage remove the pain points of older Pi setups. Tabs stay intentionally limited to avoid drift.

Coding

Text editors and VS Code feel responsive, local web servers run fine, and Git work is quick. Compiles on larger projects are slower than on the desktop, which has become an enforced pause rather than a blocker. Fewer unnecessary rebuilds are the side effect.

3D CAD and slicing

FreeCAD is usable for simple parts. Complex assemblies and slicer runs clearly show the limits, with operations that are instant on a desktop taking seconds or minutes here. For heavy CAD or slicing, the desktop still has a place.

Unexpected benefits

Focus: fewer apps open, fewer tabs, deeper work.
More deliberate computing: small frictions prompt second thoughts before context switching.
Less digital clutter: limited storage encourages tidier projects and file hygiene.
Lower social media time: sites work, but the experience is just annoying enough to break the habit.

Would this work for you

It will not suit 4K video, gaming, or serious 3D workloads. It can suit writing and coding, a digital minimalism experiment, or a dedicated focus machine.

Looking ahead

The Pi 5 stays as the daily driver, with the desktop reserved for the few tasks that need headroom. Choosing constraints turned out to be a productivity boost, not a punishment. :contentReference

Thanks for reading. If you have pushed a Pi 5 further for development or CAD, share the approach so others can learn from it.