Using Q4OS on the Raspberry Pi for an all-around desktop

Conclusion

The Rasp Pi/Q4OS duo provides an impressive demonstration of what the mini-PC can do when taken off the beaten path. These tests showed that it works well as a computer for special applications, and it serves as an excellent substitute for a regular desktop computer. The limitation is that you cannot run compute-intensive or graphics-intensive applications.

Q4OS is surprisingly fluid, and extremely stable, on the Rasp Pi 2 with the TDE fork of KDE3. Moreover, it does not continuously overtax the computer. In fact, the Rasp Pi can keep pace with older Intel systems when the little computer is equipped with a fast enough microSD card. This is definitely true when an Intel system is working with a customary hard drive.

Unfortunately, the TDE desktop in the tested Q4OS version 1.4.4.1 cannot yet be completely localized to languages other than English on the Rasp Pi. Another problem is the somewhat careless implementation of software installation. The developers should delete all programs from the Rasp Pi version of the Q4OS software portfolio that are closely tied to the Intel architecture. These require special, hard-wired command sets on the hardware side. As a rule, open source software packages are available for these tasks, and they come minus the restrictive requirements.

Infos

  1. Q4OS download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/q4os/files/stable/q4os-1.4.4.1-rpi.zip/download
  2. Win32 Disk Imager: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

1 2 3 4 Next »

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF

Pages: 6

Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Raspberry Pi Geek

SINGLE ISSUES
Print Issues
Digital Issues
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Print Subs
Digisubs
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content