Little question - lately I've been thinking about getting a raspberry pi, but is it like really useful? Because it seems like a lot of fun to mess with but I'm scared that after a few months it would begin gathering dust 🤔

I absolutely recommend it, because it's the cheapest way to get a (physical) server. It has enough power for most applications and the community is huge.

But you can already see by my name that i cannot be neutral on this matter ^^"

I mean, even if you do use it for a few months, it's only $35 or so. You've probably paid $60 for a video game and stopped playing after 2 or 3 weeks, soooo the investment seems worth it to me.

It is just a low power device. I mean it has the pins for wires but I don't use them because I have no clue.
For us it manages the the DHCP (because the built-in in cheap routers are shit). At some point it provided a fake minecraft server which would wake up the real via WOL. I also wanted to install piehole but have yet to find a tutorial without autoinstaller. It can also stake cryptocurrencies if you are into that. It might also be able to serve as VPN server if you are abroad. Or you have a (custom) small app accessed by multiple devices or users on your network.

Basically perfect for small, non-resourcehungry services you want to have available all the time for yourself. But no magic box that is fun to play with, at least for me.

@jhh2450 Exactly. No need to worry about wasting money when it's only $35.

@badman keep in mind you have to pay another $25+ for charger, sd-card etc.
Then again, those parts can be re-used if you were to throw out the pi. Still, they should be in the price-listing.

Dude, Pi-hole. Just duckduckgo it.