// Raspberry Pi 5 · Dev Environment

Bare
Metal

A purpose-built Unix environment for embedded systems, robotics, and C/C++ development. Built on a Raspberry Pi 5 inside a Pironman 5 case with NVMe SSD — running i3, neovim, and a fully keyboard-driven workflow.

Bare Metal desktop setup
Pironman 5 with Raspberry Pi 5

// Hardware

The Machine

The Pironman 5 turns a Raspberry Pi 5 into a proper desktop workstation — acrylic tower case with RGB lighting, OLED status display, active cooling, and PCIe NVMe support. Small enough to sit next to a keyboard, capable enough to compile and run a full embedded dev environment.

The Environment

Every tool chosen for a reason. Keyboard-driven, minimal, and fast.

i3

Tiling window manager. Every window, workspace, and layout controlled from the keyboard. No mouse required.

Neovim

Configured for C/C++, Python, and embedded development. LSP via clangd and pyright, plugin management via lazy.nvim.

Alacritty

GPU-accelerated terminal emulator. Fast, minimal, zero bloat. Dracula theme with JetBrains Mono.

Polybar

Lightweight status bar showing CPU load, RAM usage, temperature, network status, and time.

Ranger

Terminal file manager with vim keybindings and image preview. Faster than any GUI file manager for keyboard users.

Dracula

Consistent color scheme across the entire environment — terminal, editor, status bar, and window borders.

The Workflow

neovim, ranger, and htop tiled across workspaces.

Bare Metal desktop in use