I've been testing various options for an "ultra-low power" desktop computer. At the moment, I have a #Pi Zero W 2 running #Alpine OS and #dwm with WiFi enabled coming in at 0.23mA. #RaspberryPi OS is easier to setup but it runs at around 0.32mA and is much slower than Alpine.
Anyone have any more suggestions? The trick is saving power, but keeping enough power to make dwm desktop with cli apps run smoothly. I know I can turn off the LED on the Pi, but there's got to be more I can do. Less power!
Okay, so #PiCore is amazing! RPI Zero 2 W with PiCore desktop (TC) (no DWM), wifi, mouse, and keyboard runs at 0.18mA! If you unplug the mouse and keyboard, you can have a Pi running with wifi at 0.10mA. Wowza!
Sadly, PiCore software repo lacks a lot of packages that I would need to run a CLI desktop on a daily basis. Also interesting, PiCore is very light weight cause it doesn't run anything out of the box. Alpine still runs and installs faster despite being slightly bigger. Conclusion...
PiCore is a wonderful project, and I'll keep playing around with it for some use cases, but Alpine is still my go to for ultra-low powered desktop computing.
