Building a computer science lab
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here, it looks like cold war to me. The question was initially put on hold because it was "too broad". I was just asking about the minimal hardware requirements for a workstation: the box itself, display, keyboard and mouse. I narrowed it to "the box" only. Now the answer of the moderator is "it qualifies as a technical support question".
You seem to have a few different complaints. I'll try to hit them all:
"Thank you", and other salutations, tag lines, and signatures don't belong in posts. This type of thing has been discussed many times. I see you are most active on Stack Overflow...this has been discussed there too.
No abusive moderation action was taken to remove these two words. The moderator was the person who happened to see it first and edited it according to network guidelines.
The question closed initially as "too broad". This was the correct course of action. There are three separate questions. On top of that, you wanted recommendations for a combination of parts. The possible answers to "combinations" are huge.
We have, as a community, decided that each component needs it's own question. This allows the user and other users to more easily compare products. A combination answer is very difficult to compare, especially for new users. For example, compare three different machines that have 3 different CPUs, 3 different amounts of RAM, 3 different hard drives and 3 different video cards, but all have roughly the same price. The combinations of low end CPU but high hard drive space or high end CPU but small amount of RAM or any other combination are very hard to compare, if you don't know what you are looking at.
After your edit, the question became (and notice that it's still multiple questions):
will raspberry pi 3 suffice for the requirements I mentioned above?
If I answer "Yes", then we are done here and I haven't made a recommendation. Instead, I've helped you determine if your machine has the specifications to run some software. That's technical support. If, however, I answer "No", I run into your follow up questions...
I definitely don't want to go with normal workstation (heat, noise, etc). should I look for more? Beaglebone Black?
Should you look for more? Probably. I don't know. I'm guessing you want to complete this task. In which case the answer is "Yes, keep looking." If not, though, I suppose we are done. In either case, again this isn't a recommendation.
Focus on your two products, and ask for the recommendation. You throw your alternative out as literally the last two words of the question and don't mention any thing else about it.
Beagleboard Black. Well, now we have two things to compare - Raspberry Pi vs a Beagleboard. We can build a question out of this. You've provided two possible solutions an your goals.
You are looking for a recommendation between the BeagleBoard and the RPi to meet this criteria:
The next question you ask should be about the monitors. Keyboard and mice are cheap. You don't need anything fancy. For monitors, you will have a budget of $2000 minus either (30 * $36 (for the Pis) or 30 * 55 (for the Beagleboards) + taxes. Unfortunately, you're going to be disappointed that you can't get 30 monitors for roughly $1000.
You flagged your question for reopening once you'd edited it; I responded to that flag by commenting, and I also left a custom response to the flag. Look at your flag history to see that.
With that said, I think it's a little overkill to call this the Cold War because I put your question on hold and left a comment to explain why I couldn't reopen it. All things in proportion, eh?
Your first revision:
- what displays, keyboards and mice should I consider?
- will raspberry pi 2 suffice for the requirements I mentioned above? I definitely don't want to go with normal workstation (heat, noise, etc). should I look for more? Beaglebone Black?
- the budget is goddam low. To be explicit, I can personally go as up as $2k for the workstations and try to squeeze what's left needed from donations.
You asked 3 different questions, which is too much to deal with in one question. That's why I initially closed it, as too broad.
The question after your edit:
will raspberry pi 3 suffice for the requirements I mentioned above? I definitely don't want to go with normal workstation (heat, noise, etc). should I look for more? Beaglebone Black?
What's happening now is that your question is giving us your idea for a system, and asking us to review a central component for its sufficiency. That's not something this site covers; it's somewhere in the sticky territory between a build review and technical support, neither of which are in-scope here.
For your question to be reopened, you should edit it so that it gives us your requirements for the workstation, and asks us to recommend any component that will satisfy your requirements. If you're on a budget, you can specify that and the answers will only recommend components within that budget. If you have any other unusual needs, just specify them.
