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I use my Pi 3 as a desktop machine and it generally does pretty good. Occasionally I run into the issue that if I use an application, mainly Firefox and sometimes Chromium, the application will either partially or completely lock up. I expect this, but this freeze effects my whole system.

Basically, I might be trying to read a website like makeuseof.com in Firefox, with no other tabs or other applications open, and then randomly, Firefox and the Pi starts to randomly freeze up or just completely lock up, forcing me to reboot it. I don't even attempt to run YouTube, even when Firefox is minimized.

I can, most of the time, in Chromium run YouTube if it isn't full-screen, and can run other programs it Chromium is minimized. But it will sometimes lock up.

This got me thinking: Could this be happening because Raspbian isn't a Real Time operating system? If I set the Pi up with a RTC module, will it be more stable and not partially or completely freeze up? I wonder because I have Raspbian x86 on my PC with specs that are actually poorer than my Pi, and it runs fine.

Maybe I am wrong, and its not the actually issue, but I never have gone over 70% on the CPU usage meter on the Panel and never use up even half the available RAM. I even was using ZRAM a few months ago and never even use over 30%.

lockheed silverman
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2 Answers2

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No, adding a Real Time Clock module to your pi will not magically turn Raspbian (or any other OS) into a Real Time Operating System. Whether a Real Time Operating System will improve the performance of watching YouTube videos is another matter. Note that the Raspbianx86 on your PC isn't a Real Time Operating System either.

"Real Time" has two distinct and unrelated meanings in "Real Time Clock" and "Real Time Computing". The Real Time Clock is just a clock (like the one on your wall or wrist) that tells the OS what the real time of day is and usually has a small battery to keep the clock running when the main device is turned off. Real Time Computing refers to specialised software, usually for safety critical embedded control, where events need to happen in (nearly) real-time.

Roger Jones
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Your problems most likely arise from combination of things:

  • Raspbian is a less polished software platform compared to windows (especially in graphics drivers department and display subsystem = "x.org". I do believe that this is where your problem originates)
  • Raspberry Pi is not very fast (especially memory) and this will amplify problems; this also makes multi-core setup work less efficient than expected.
  • Hardware is not most likely not properly shielded against EMI (plastic case ? no case at all ?)
  • Power supply and power connector are not the strongest part of platform (PoE hat proves that)

What is not your problem is Real time clock. It has no impact on OS because system is not using it during operation. OS only uses RTC once during boot to set up clock that is operated by it and lives in CPU/memory as monotonic counter. Yo can choose to synchronize both by using "hwclock" command.

Raspberry Pi does not have RTC and while you can equip it with one it does not make much sense if you are connected to internet. You can synchronize time with NTP servers and this is proven and very reliable method of keeping time; even computers with RTC will use NTP because RTC clocks on motherboards, etc. are considered inferior to GPS, cellular and many other professional real time clock solutions.

Raspbian is build on top of Linux and it is the same type of operating system as Windows or MacOSx. Realtime operating systems are different and usually not suitable for desktop operation.

Mariusz Zieliński
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