Libre Computer Le Potato Mini Single Board Computer with USB WiFi 4 and Heatsink (2GB WiFi 4, Libre Blue)

I've wanted to get a RPi for a while now but they've been so insanely expensive and/or hard to get lately. Came across this RPi 3 clone and for $35 for "pro" version after coupon, I couldn't say no. I was expecting to run into issues at every turn with this board, my plan was for it to be an emulator console to play old-school games, but for the price i figured it was worth some headache to get it set up and running. Wow was I wrong... Batocera has an image specifically for the Le Potato. I downloaded that image, wrote it to my microSD with BalenaEtcher, popped it into the Le Potato and everything booted right up. I have an old Steam Controller that I used to test with, plugged it in, everything just worked... Le Potato found the WiFi dongle and I got it connected to my network, SSHed to it and transferred my ROM files to it, and just started playing games. I was amazed that every part of this project worked without any kind of issues or troubleshooting needed start to finish. LibreComputer knocked it out of the park with this thing, I know it's technically "last gen" tech, but at least it is priced right and still runs plenty of stuff. I will be definitely be buying more of these little guys (I have plans for a Kali install and maybe as a replacement board for my 3D Printer). Great job Libre!

I feel like this is fulfilling the promise of Raspberry Pi where it fell short. I've been the owner and operator of multiple Pi's since 2011, but their supply chain issues or whatever meant I could not practically continue to use them -- I wasn't going to pay the absurd prices demanded for the few available. I also didn't like the higher power consumption and heat of the latest Pi 4. For my purposes, if I was going to use power and make enough heat to run fans, I could use server hardware retired from the datacenter that would be far more powerful than a Pi 4 and cost me less to purchase. But I wanted the low power and price that these Le Potatoes deliver. I found the images on Libre's website or linked from it were problematic. I tried Raspberry, Debian, Android, Ubuntu, and Armbian. I had a lot of trouble with the first three. I didn't want to build my own, so I tried the second two. The Ubuntu image worked fine, but was a little heavy. I did evaluate these as desktop alternatives -- they struggle against Wirth's Law. As such, they're unsuitable for web browsing or Youtube. They'll do it, but it's just too slow. I am using them in a coding class as educational machines running VS Code and Python. They work great for that. I also use them for mini servers. For these, I'm using an Armbian image that seems to work very well indeed. I've used them for Wordpress, but presently, I've ditched CMS and am doing all static pages. I'm using Apache and it works fine. I'll switch to nginx at some point and then these Potatoes will be brilliant. I also run them for BIND, Postfix, Dovecot, and all the associated things like DKIM, DMARC, SASL, SPF, etc. I wish the eMMC was more practical. I looked into it and it's expensive and it is reported to be difficult by many reviewers. I have various low-capacity SD cards on-hand, but even if I needed to buy them, 32GB are about $6, whereas the eMMC of the same size are presently listed at $20 each.

So far, the device is working wonderfully. Downloading the Debian image from the official site took three hours, which was a bit disappointing. However, after flashing it to an SD card, the device booted up without any issues. I’m currently using it as a mini WireGuard VPN server on my home network, and the transfer speeds are impressive. It’s genuinely performing well. I would have rated it five stars, but the lengthy download of the official images brings it down to four stars. Despite not fully utilizing the device's potential, I believe it’s a fantastic option if you’re looking for something lightweight and easy to set up without spending too much on a Raspberry Pi. It certainly gets the job done!

I installed a version of RetroArch on this Le Potato for retro gaming, and it is absolutely perfect. It runs everything without any problems whatsoever. I debated whether to get a Raspberry Pi, which (at the time of building this) are in high demand and difficult to find at any reasonable price. The Le Potato was the right price, available, and does the job. It's a fast, competent little thing and has wireless capacity with the added dongle. It communicates well with the USB dongles of my two replica SNES controllers. Every game performs well. What's not to like?

I'm using this to replace a pi4 for klipper. You get the OS images from their website, I think I'm using their raspbian/armbian image since the official distros won't work with the le potato (I think). Takes a little more setup than tossing a full klipper image onto a pi, but ultimately works great and is priced fairly. I think the main issue I ran into was getting klipper to recognize the potato as a secondary mcu. If you need wifi capability, you will want to get the bundle with the wifi dongle as it's cheaper than buying them separately. Been up for a few months without issues.

this little thing has been great. I run home automation on it.

alles super es ist doch da

I have this board since a couple month now , i installed armbian/debian/ubuntu/raspbian , i changed power supply, i changed sd card. I changed wifi card. Always a problem, wifi dropping randomly, sd card corrupted suddenly or whatever , always a problem, and many time i tough i had it fix but 2 day later another problem pop up...poor driver/software support...wish i had buy a PI...wasted money and time.

Reicht als Serverchen für openHAB. Etwas mehr RAM würde aber gut tun. Stromverbrauch ist 1a (sehr niedrig). Serverimages von Libre Computer sind Ok. Workstationimages zu fett für das RAM. Bei Armbian etwas viel gebastel.

Mine was missing the 2.4Ghz antenna, no huge issue but when I plugged it in and inserted the sd card with the debian from their website, the entire system was barely usable and crashed multiple times over. I intended to use this for a sandbox homeassistant system but couldnt even finish setting up debian. Not recommended.