We cannot deny that the Raspberry Pi has become one of the most popular microcomputers. Its price, and power, have made it a very affordable option to tinker, mount a home server and even to turn it into a retro console. This device uses free hardware, and has a wide variety of operating systems to choose from. It is even possible to turn it into a fully functional pocket computer to always carry it with us. However, when choosing the programs that we are going to use, we may find ourselves with limitations.
At the beginning, when the first units came out, Raspbian (now known as Raspberry Pi OS, the official Debian-based operating system) encountered a number of problems when running many of the programs. These were because, when using an ARM processor , many programs (such as VLC) were not prepared. Today we can use any Linux program on the Raspberry Pi. But what about Windows programs?
There is no official version of Windows for the Raspberry Pi . There are projects that manage to make it work, but with many problems. And there is a version of Windows 10 for IoT that has nothing to do with the desktop version that we are used to.
Therefore, if we want to use the Raspberry Pi as the main computer, we must know that there will be several programs that we cannot count on. Here are some of them.
Programs not available for the Raspberry Pi
Microsoft Office to open and compose documents
Microsoft‘s office suite, Office, is one of the first applications that we tend to miss first. Microsoft only developed Office for Windows and macOS, leaving Linux always without the possibility of using its suite. Therefore, we cannot use Word, Excel or PowerPoint on Raspberry Pi OS or the other distros for this micro-computer.
As an alternative to the Microsoft suite, we can opt for LibreOffice , a free and totally free suite that works perfectly.
Photoshop, the popular photo editor
Another program that we miss in Linux is Photoshop. And, therefore, we will not be able to use it on this micro-computer either. Photoshop is one of Adobe‘s star programs and it allows us to make all kinds of retouching and editing to our photos. Neither Photoshop, nor other related programs like Lightroom, will be available for use on this micro-pc.
As an alternative, we can choose GIMP , one of the closest rivals to the Adobe program. And if we customize its interface we can make GIMP the same as Photoshop.
Adobe Acrobat, the most complete PDF editor
As with Photoshop, we will also miss Adobe Acrobat , the most used PDF document viewer and editor in Windows. Adobe has never supported Linux, so its programs are not available for this operating system. But as in the previous cases, there are excellent alternatives with which we can both open and edit PDF documents, such as LibreOffice Draw itself.
Modern games or triple A
Of course, we also have to forget about playing . This is given for two reasons. The first of them is that most games are not ported to Linux, and could only run on Windows. And the second of them is the limited power of this micro-computer, especially as far as GPU is concerned.
Although, of course, there are alternatives. If we like retro games, RetroArch will be a must-have program for the Raspberry Pi that we cannot ignore.