$25 PC Prototype Gets Award At ARM TechCon

New submitter gbl08ma writes "The Raspberry Pi project, which aims to create a $25 Linux box, won an award for the category 'Best in Show for Hardware Design' at ARM TechCon, even though they haven't yet released any final product (the release will be sometime in late November). Eben Upton demonstrated the capabilities of one of the prototypes that have been built. From advanced graphics at 1080p resolution to simple web browsing and desktop productivity, the small boards with ARM-based processors and PoP SDRAM have proven to be very versatile, fast and durable."

Comments

First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

The $25 pi is cool and all, but I'd find it much more interesting with WiFi and a bit more RAM.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[StarWreck]

Well, just buy the $35 version then

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Anonymous Coward]

...then add a usb wifi dongle.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

The $35 version only has wired ethernet, and I suppose I should have been specific that I would like at least 512MB of RAM, preferably 2GB, especially when coping with a 700MHz ARM 11 as a processor. I guess I just want a "decent" web browsing capability instead of one that will always feel lame when compared to a normal desktop.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Narishma]

128 MB of RAM should be enough for anybody.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[timeOday]

I don't suppose it would be viable as a desktop. I can't imagine it has either the CPU or video performance to play youtube videos for example.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At present, I don't think that anybody is doing 2GB of PoP RAM, even the dual-core-monster-smartphones that cost 10-20 times as much cap out at half to a quarter of that...

ARM's push for the server world will presumably make (relatively) cheap ARM boards with substantial RAM available; but until that happens, treating ARM boards like contemporary desktops just isn't going to work. They are arguably wasteful and expensive in many applications; but the x86s of the world are brutally powerful.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Anonymous Coward]

They did not want to make a general purpose computer but focusing on education. Well, for 25$, I can't really complain, they have had many compromises made too.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[flimflammer]

Yes, but you can plug in a wifi dongle onto the usb port and boom: wifi!

Can't do anything about the memory, but the thing isn't meant to replace our computers for web browsing. These have a much less general use.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[click2005]

The point is they're supposed to be disposable/breakable. Adding that much ram would increase costs and dimensions i'd bet.
You'd probably be better off buying a cheap android tablet.

Either way I these devices will be great for home automation.
Low power enough to sit behind a light switch but powerful enough to handle monitoring
lights, temperatures and a lot more.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[hamster_nz]

Um, what. Do you really expect for the price of an Arduino?

I am going to be very happy with one of these and a wireless keyboard and mouse on the TV for those iIMDB moments and another on a monitor as a thin client, maybe a third with a usb disk as a storage server (100Mb wired to my router will be fine for wireless clients...

At $105 for three of them, that is a steal!

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[mollymoo]

>Either way I these devices will be great for home automation.
>Low power enough to sit behind a light switch but powerful enough to handle monitoring
>lights, temperatures and a lot more.

A 700 MHz ARM11 SoC with 128 MiB of RAM is two or three orders of magnitude more hardware than you need to do that.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Um, what. Do you really expect for the price of an Arduino?

I understand (at some levels) the concept of trying to create a computer for less than the cost of a textbook, but I'd much rather pay $45 and get WiFi, or even $55 and get WiFi and Bluetooth (or, gasp, even $75 and get a plastic case and power supply in the deal.) My vision for this thing is to hang it on the back of the living room TV and use it as a computer in the living room... I currently use an eee nettop for this, but something even smaller and less power consuming would be more attractive.

And, speaking to the foundation's goals, it would be a likely solution for my kids to have computers in their bedrooms, especially if it could be done without wires.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Yes, but you can plug in a wifi dongle onto the usb port and boom: wifi!

Can't do anything about the memory, but the thing isn't meant to replace our computers for web browsing. These have a much less general use.

I had an 8-bit machine with a cassette drive, I well remember "less general use" machines, I also know that 95%+ of what my kids do on computers, for school or fun, runs through the web browser.

I suppose if I provided them with lame hardware that is incapable of web browsing, they might be more inclined to learn to program it, but more likely they'll just seek out some other way to get on the web and ignore the lame toy.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[ThurstonMoore]

Monoprice has a tiny USB WiFi adapter that would be a good fit. The

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=105&cp_id=10501&cs_id=1050108&p_id=8072&seq=1&format=2

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

but the x86s of the world are brutally powerful.

I have not one, but two Asus eee nettop machines in the house, sometimes they feel brutal to work with, but never brutally powerful, more like brutal in an obtuse, Neanderthal way. They are impressively small, quiet and power efficient, and the two of them together cost less than the bottom of the line "mini" fruity option.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[dameron]

First world computing is becoming disposable. Third world computing is becoming affordable, yet you're bitching that the process isn't exactly matching up to your needs.

How many people that need a $25 computer will be worried that it feels "lame when compared to a normal desktop"?

Answer: nobody.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[tbird81]

The $35 version only has wired ethernet, and I suppose I should have been specific that I would like at least 512MB of RAM, preferably 2GB, especially when coping with a 700MHz ARM 11 as a processor. I guess I just want a "decent" web browsing capability instead of one that will always feel lame when compared to a normal desktop.

So WiFi, 2GB RAM, how about built-in monitor and keyboard? And of course a trackpad and some spare USB ports on the side. It should have a built in OS, and a long-life battery as part of it too.

If only someone made such a device.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Osgeld]

hang around maybe models C and D will do just that, for now A and B seem perfectly reasonable. besides dump javabloat and a machine with 256 megs does decent around the web anyway ... I do it every day

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

How many people that need a $25 computer will be worried...

How many people that "need" a $25 computer will be able to afford a monitor and keyboard, or electricity to drive it all?

Filling the "wants" of the people who can actually afford it is what marketing is about, otherwise you've got a noble product that nobody buys (i.e. a big waste of time and effort.)

I think the Pi will fill enough "wants" to not be a waste of time, I also think if they push just a little bit up-market, they can get a much larger volume, which should help with the production costs of the entire product line. The foundation appears to know what they are doing and don't need my 2 cents (or, rather, pence), but that's what /. is good for: spouting off opinions for no particular reason.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Baloroth]

Pay about $100 more, and you can even get a screen!

I think you are rather missing the point, which is that these are absolute dead cheap, low power devices that can do quite a lot. If you need bluetooth, Wifi, and the rest, get a cheap internet tablet (some exist ion the 100-200 dollar range). The point of these are dead-cheap, low power applications, while still having a full-on computer. I can't even think of any real applications I would use it for, but just because I can't doesn't mean a lot of Linux hackers can't. And producing cheap stuff like this is always good. Otherwise, you end up with the feature-but-price creep so common in nearly all consumer electronics areas. Digital cameras are the best example I can think of. We could produce cheap, but very good quality, 5-6 MP cameras, which is good enough for most people. We don't, because companies would rather phase out older tech so they can keep prices at $90+ minimum (camera phones contributed too, but that is a more recent phenomenon). Netbooks helped change this in the laptop realm, hopefully this will help even more (and more in the desktop are).

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

The $35 version only has wired ethernet, and I suppose I should have been specific that I would like at least 512MB of RAM, preferably 2GB, especially when coping with a 700MHz ARM 11 as a processor. I guess I just want a "decent" web browsing capability instead of one that will always feel lame when compared to a normal desktop.

So WiFi, 2GB RAM, how about built-in monitor and keyboard? And of course a trackpad and some spare USB ports on the side. It should have a built in OS, and a long-life battery as part of it too.

If only someone made such a device.

And, you forgot, sold it for $25... I think you can actually get those on eBay, 3 year old notebooks are going cheap.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

hang around maybe models C and D will do just that, for now A and B seem perfectly reasonable. besides dump javabloat and a machine with 256 megs does decent around the web anyway ... I do it every day

I have an iPad (not a wallet vote on my part, actually "won" it in a drawing I didn't even know I had entered), and I must say that it sucks not having flash work, especially for things that the kids use like spellingcity.com. I also have a PS3 and will not go into depth about the ways that web browsing sucks on it, even under (the now verboten) Linux. I have also used a PandaBoard as a "desktop" for a little while, I assume the Raspberry Pi will "feel" very similar - amazingly good, for what it is, but still lacking.

I totally intend to order a model B, and maybe get a few more of them if it works out as a replacement for any of my existing machines around the house.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[citizenr]

>Either way I these devices will be great for home automation.
>Low power enough to sit behind a light switch but powerful enough to handle monitoring
>lights, temperatures and a lot more.

A 700 MHz ARM11 SoC with 128 MiB of RAM is two or three orders of magnitude more hardware than you need to do that.

So is Arduino. Dont forget it will be on same price level as cheapest Arduino while providing tons more functionality.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[hairyfeet]

Exactly. What this will be good for is third world applications like information kiosks and schools, basically allowing anyone anywhere to be able to do basics like web browsing, document creation etc and I'm sure being Linux based it won't be long before plenty of educational apps are ported to it.

While most of us in the west probably wouldn't care for surfing on this thing (hell the hand me downs i gave to my nephews were dual core Pentiums with 2Gb of RAM) we have to remember that our own computer revolution started with computers like the VIC 20, which this thing is a supercomputer by comparison. I bet its incredibly miserly when it comes to power consumption as well, which will be a boon in places where power isn't guaranteed 24/7.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[jd]

The original OLPC sported a clockwork generator, as do emergency radios. If this prototype doesn't have that facility, then (a) it should, and (b) it's the fault of people who pestered OLPC to ditch the generator for mains power.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[timeOday]

How many people that need a $25 computer will be worried that it feels "lame when compared to a normal desktop"?

What would you propose to do with it? Firefox and OpenOffice won't run. The Ubuntu LiveCD won't even run on 512MB (I found out by trial and error).

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[evilviper]

I guess I just want a "decent" web browsing capability instead

Then why bother with this thing at all? A refurb Pentium4 PC goes for $50 shipped. This thing only makes sense if you need a super-small form factor, and even then, rooting and flashing an older Android smartphone seems like a better option to me.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[timeOday]

Used notebooks actually hold their value fairly well. Anything that will work for websurfing (including youtube) is a couple hundred bucks, not $25. For $25 you will get a "for parts, not working" laptop that has already been scavenged for parts once or twice.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Osgeld]

yes that 4$ TV 25 cent keyboard and mouse will really break the bank compared to the 25$ computer dumbass

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[dameron]

This is the kind of shit that makes me regret signing into Slashdot.

>What would you propose to do with it? Firefox and OpenOffice won't run. The Ubuntu LiveCD won't even run on 512MB (I found out by trial and error).

We could build a thin client to remotely access your exaggerated expectations?

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Shikaku]

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/super-mini-bluetooth-2-0-adapter-dongle-vista-compatible-11866?=r.20144190 USB Bluetooth $1.80
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/ultra-mini-nano-usb-2-0-802-11n-150mbps-wifi-wlan-wireless-network-adapter-48166?=r.20144190 USB Wifi N $8.99
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/mini-handheld-rechargeable-56-key-wireless-bluetooth-keyboard-w-touchpad-black-73249?=r.20144190 bluetooth keyboard and mouse $33.80
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/7-ports-powered-usb-hub-678?=r.20144190 A/C Powered USB hub so you can use all of these and more (like external hard drives) $15.90

They are pretty cheap. I don't know about the wifi chip but most of them are really cheap and work out of the box on Linux. If you buy the whole set it's $60.50, and with the $25 price tag that's $85.50 for a Linux media center if you cared to try it.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[klingens]

Firefox will run fine on 128MB and has some RAM left over. I tried it on a PII 233 laptop with that amount of RAM. It was godawful slow rendering and forget any Javascript but RAM usage was ok. This however is a much faster CPU. There are Linux distros with browsers that start with 16MB machines so 128MB is a lot to work with.
Just don't look at bloated general purpose distros like Ubuntu which need a 3D accelerator to start properly.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

I still have a problem with the notion of people who don't have internet access "needing" a computer. If you don't have mains power, then, odds are, you don't have internet access either.

I made good use of computers before there was a useful internet, but I was in a distinct minority. The "general population" didn't care much about computers until the late '90s, even if they were forced to use them for work, and I can respect their disregard of the technology, it didn't to anything relevant for them, until it got connected.

Now, I can see how just about anybody, anywhere on the planet, can benefit from computer+internet access, as a library / teaching tool. Raspberry Pi seems to be catering to that distinct minority who can benefit from computer without internet access, and more power to them, but I feel like that minority is around 1 to 2 percent of the general population, and most people in the developed world who are in that minority will already have computer equipment stacked fairly high in the house (I know I spent my life savings of $700 for a 4MHz 8-bit machine with 16K of RAM).

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

The form factor (and power factor) are both extremely attractive - I'm currently using Asus eee nettops for the purpose, and they're good, but the Pi, with a little more juice, could be better.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Anonymous Coward]

The original intent of this PC is in the spirit of the VIC 20. It is a little computer for kids to hack around with. The difference between it and the VIC 20 is that it costs so little the adults won't mind if the kids hack around with it.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

All valid points, and thanks for the shopping list I may well use it, but, on the other hand, I can also acknowledge the validity of the lazy point of view that each of those mix and match parts has the potential to be a giant time sink and/or waste of money and effort. Especially when playing with wireless tech, things don't always work as well as they might in your particular installation. If a system of wireless components is pre-tested and demonstrated to work... there's value in that.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Arlet]

So is Arduino. Dont forget it will be on same price level as cheapest Arduino while providing tons more functionality.

Not really. The Arduino doesn't offer a HDMI video output, but does everything else much better. Turning on a single I/O output on the Arduino is a single, straightforward, line of code, which doesn't require writing a Linux device driver. The Arduino also has ready made shields for everything you could need, and tons of example projects and documentation.

For home automation, and other hobby projects, the Arduino is much better suited.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Bert64]

Your 4 year old P4 will pretty soon cost more than the small ARM board in power, assuming you actually turn it on.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[citizenr]

compiling a program easier than

echo -ne "\x01" > /dev/gpio/something

?
you must be special

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Intropy]

As to your power comment, the FAQs page on their website claims it runs on 4 AA batteries.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Anonymous Coward]

So is Arduino. Dont forget it will be on same price level as cheapest Arduino while providing tons more functionality.

Cheapest official Arduino board. To make an fully Arduino compatable board only requires about 8 USD worth of components. Less if you are buying in bulk.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Arlet]

You're going to need a program anyway to do something useful. If you want to use this for home automation, flipping a light switch manually sure beats typing echo -ne "\x01" > /dev/gpio/something

And as soon as you start programming something more complex, it's a lot easier on the Arduino.

What if you want to hook up a HD44780 compatible LCD screen to 14 GPIO pins. Are you going to write the entire LCD driver in shell script.

Or maybe the GPIO is connected to a speaker, and you'd like to get exactly 440 Hertz out of it.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[citizenr]

You're going to need a program anyway to do something useful. If you want to use this for home automation, flipping a light switch manually sure beats typing echo -ne "\x01" > /dev/gpio/something

program a script that i can edit on a device while i debug it, without compilation on host computer and flashing EVERY SINGLE time i try something

And as soon as you start programming something more complex, it's a lot easier on the Arduino.

no its not, unless you are special

What if you want to hook up a HD44780 compatible LCD screen to 14 GPIO pins. Are you going to write the entire LCD driver in shell script.

http://lcd-linux.sourceforge.net/

yep, you are special (man, i love ad hominem)

Or maybe the GPIO is connected to a speaker, and you'd like to get exactly 440 Hertz out of it.

its called hardware timers, confirmed by the devs as present on Rasp PI. Not to mention there is already sound output on the device so you have normal audio output instead of PC speaker equivalent.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Arlet]

And how much work is it to port that LCD linux driver to the Raspi ? You'll need to muck with the driver to get the GPIOs connected properly, so all of a sudden you're building kernel modules with all the complications this brings.

On the Arduino, you just call Lcd.Write( "hello world" ), and use a standard LCD shield. You don't even have to worry about wiring your own connector.

its called hardware timers, confirmed by the devs as present on Rasp PI.

Yeah. Too bad there's no datasheet of this chip. And besides, you're programming on top of Linux, so you're going to have to figure out how to get accurate timing in a user application through the standard means, not by directly setting up a timer interrupt (which is only a few lines of code on the Arduino).

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[FrootLoops]

Wow, why does this post have so many comments when it hasn't even been moderated? Oh wait, it's the first comment (ignoring the -1 Golden Girls lyrics [wonderful show, by the way] posted by an AC just above you). Never mind. Move along.

Seriously though, can something be done about the prevalence of posting in the first comment with a score >= 2? It buries high quality posts at the bottom, unmoderated and largely unseen. Would randomly reordering the top-level comments be so terrible?

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[flimflammer]

I think you're still kind of missing the point of the hardware, however. From their about page:

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity (Registration Number 1129409) which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing.

We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. We expect this computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.

It's not really intended as a general consumer device, though there will be many general consumers (like me) interested. Their primary interest was bringing them into schools at a price point even poorer schools could afford for teaching computer related subjects (such as software development), and this little device will be more than suitable for this task. It just so happens the specs are good enough for there to be applications outside their initial target. I mean they got Quake 3 Arena running on the thing at a not too bad framerate at 1080p /w 4xAA and all the settings maxed out. I gather as far as web browsing performance goes we can expect something at least similar to higher end mobile phones.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[hamster_nz]

From the blog, power has been confirmed to be micro USB.

So I can run it off all those cellphone charges I have around the place, or that useless USB port on the TV. Yay!

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[hamster_nz]

Sheesh! It is horses for courses...

If you want to use a consumer display, and consumer USB devices then go Raspberry Pi.

If you want to do bitbashing interfaces on an 8bit controller, go Arduino.

If you want to do real stuff, then get yourself a FPGA board :-)

I really like the Papilio One. One minute an Arduino, the next an arcade game from FPGA Arcade

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Arlet]

Agreed. If you need HDMI output, Ethernet, USB, and not much else, get a Raspberry Pi. It's definitely a cool board to work as a thin media server that you can tuck behind your TV, if you don't mind the raw electronics look and a bit of hacking.

For tinkering with hardware devices where you don't need HDMI, get an Arduino board, or a cheap ARM Cortex eval board with plenty of I/O, open documentation and free tools.

For learning to use a computer, or to do any other kind of serious work or play, get a laptop, smart phone, or a normal PC.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[citizenr]

And how much work is it to port that LCD linux driver to the Raspi ?

zero, because its a LINUX driver for LINUX device

You'll need to muck with the driver to get the GPIOs connected properly, so all of a sudden you're building kernel modules with all the complications this brings.

On the Arduino, you just call Lcd.Write( "hello world" ), and use a standard LCD shield. You don't even have to worry about wiring your own connector.

its called hardware timers, confirmed by the devs as present on Rasp PI.

Yeah. Too bad there's no datasheet of this chip. And besides, you're programming on top of Linux, so you're going to have to figure out how to get accurate timing in a user application through the standard means, not by directly setting up a timer interrupt (which is only a few lines of code on the Arduino).

You are hopeless. Somehow you are terrified of a real operating system + real peripherals with all the benefits they bring.
Look at OpenWRT. Rasppi will be like that, but with full OpenGL support.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[hamster_nz]

Well, The iPad I am attempting to typing on has only 512MB, so I guess a Raspberry Pi will be good for nothing... ... but email, usable web browsers, nifty games, watching video, simple productivity apps....

All it takes is a little faith.

I'm also been running Linux 2.6 + busybox on a 100MHz soft processor on a FPGA with 32MB, so it can be done.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Arlet]

zero, because its a LINUX driver for LINUX device

Except it doesn't use the same I/O connections.

Somehow you are terrified of a real operating system + real peripherals with all the benefits they bring.

Not terrified. Just pointing out that's it a lot more work to make simple peripherals work on a powerful SoC like this one. I've written simple Linux drivers for the OMAP, and finding out that the SoC datasheet is 3500 pages can be a bit daunting (and the OMAP actually has a free datasheet, unlike this Broadcom chip). Even though the driver only needs 1 line to do the actual work, it takes another 50 lines to properly hook it into the kernel.

I've also made simple drivers on various microcontrollers, and it's a lot easier, and a lot more fun.

Now, if you're happy using the binary blob GPU driver to play movies from a USB drive, I'm sure this device will be great, but then you could also buy a cheap media player for about the same price.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[xiox]

As mentioned below, it can play 1080P video:
video.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[tp1024]

1 or 2 percent of the general population is a market of 70 to 140 million people ....

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[tp1024]

Or if you feel that a 100W system simply has too much of an impact on your electricity bill.

If you want to keep it running for an average of 10 hours a day, it will consume 365 kWh per year. Even in the USA that's $36.50 per year. In places were people don't waste energy like they own the world - devastatingly poor countries like Germany - you're talking upwards of $100 per year.

The Raspberry is using 1W at full power.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[bcmm]

1080p playback is mentioned in the actual summary. This works by hardware accelleration, btw. If adobe doesn't want to make Flash use it, I'm sure HTML5 Youtube will work.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Arlet]

The Raspberry is using 1W at full power.

and 41W if you include the monitor.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[TheRaven64]

It's intended to teach computing, not to teach media consumption using a computer. Like the BBC Micro that inspired it, it's intended to have a reasonable range of I/O capabilities for controlling electronics projects and a decent programming environment. Everything else is a bonus.

When the BBC Micro started to be replaced by Archimedes machines and later IBM PCs in schools, the focus on computer education shifted away from how it works and how you can control it to using off-the-shelf packages. I was right at the tail end of that transition, and my lecturers noticed a fairly abrupt jump in the programming abilities of people who were taught with the BBC to those a few years later who were taught with PCs.

We live in a society where basic programming is as important as basic penmanship was a century ago. Most people won't become programmers, but they will need to be able to use various domain-specific languages, even if just to write office macros. Yet, during this transition, our school system has moved away from teaching programming to young children - the time when they are most receptive to it - and taught them how to use specific software packages, rather than how to understand the underlying logic behind them.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[TheRaven64]

I've not used an aurdino, but how easy is it to write a simple web application that is lets users control that GPIO pin from any machine on the network? Because that's pretty trivial with the Raspberry PI...

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Arlet]

Here's an example of a web server that let's you see the voltage on the analog input pins:

http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/WebServer

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[TheRaven64]

The project's been covered on Slashdot, what, four times now? And people still don't understand what the target market is!

This is not aimed at the third world (although I am involved with a project in Tanzania that's considering using them if we can get a FreeBSD port), it's aimed at UK schools. When I went to school, we had BBC Model B computers and a couple of BBC Masters. The A and B nomenclature of the Raspberry Pi is directly inherited from the original BBC micros, because they are intended to fill exactly the same niche: teaching kids how to make computers do what they want. Modern computing in schools has drifted too far towards teaching kids to do what the computer wants.

When you turned on the BBC, you were in a programming environment. Actually a fairly powerful one: a dialect of BASIC that supported structured programming, direct memory manipulation via PEEK and POKE, and a built-in assembler (i.e. everything you needed to write a JIT compiler, although I never did).

You also had a range of I/O capabilities, including analogue input and digital input and output that could be read or written to trivially, just by reading or writing the relevant memory address. These machines had just enough abstraction that they weren't totally intimidating, but it was thin enough that you could push (POKE?) through it and see exactly how things were working. That was what made it a good teaching machine.

The original BBC Model B cost about £300, in 1981s money. Accounting for inflation, you can give every child in the class one of these to play with for the price of buying the BBC B for the classroom back in 1981.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[bcmm]

Now, if you're happy using the binary blob GPU driver to play movies from a USB drive

Please learn the difference between firmware and drivers.

Even very trivial computer hardware has some sort of microprocessor doing something in it, most likely with propriatary code. Your mouse has one. Some more complex hardware, especially GPUs, does not store it's own firmware, instead having the driver load it from the system's persistant storage at startup.

Claiming that a driver that can send the manufacturer's firmware blob to a chip is a closed driver is like claiming that the USB HID driver for linux is closed because you don't have the designs for the Logitech chip at the other end of the USB link.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[TheRaven64]

Did you just get your first computer or something? This machine is intended as the spiritual successor of the BBC Models A and B, which had 16KB and 32KB respectively. It is intended to fulfil the same purpose. Yet, apparently, you can't do in 256MB of RAM today what we could in 32KB of RAM in 1981? OpenOffice and FireFox, ignoring the fact that they both run quite happily in 512MB of RAM - I can run them both, simultaneously, on my Efika with an 800MHz ARM CPU and 512MB of RAM - are totally irrelevant for the task of teaching children how a computer works.

Oh, and LiveCDs need a lot of RAM because they need to create a big writable overlay filesystem in RAM, so that's a stupid thing to bring up, independent of the other stupidity in your post.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[errandum]

Flash already uses this since minor versions ago.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[TheRaven64]

I bought my IBM ThinkPad R31 for £100 on eBay back around 2005. For £200, I can get a dual-core 64-bit laptop. Looking at eBay right now, there are quite a few laptops going for under £50 with 1-2GHz single-core CPUs. Not very many at the cheap end because the effort of packaging and posting them is more than you get for selling it. If you look in local computer shops, you can get second hand laptops very cheaply. They also appear on things like Freecycle pretty regularly - people can't sell them, but they'll give them away if you collect. If you're happy with something like a 1GHz Pentium M, you can pick up a second hand laptop for next to nothing - often just the cost of getting yourself to someone else's house and getting yourself and the laptop back home.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[bcmm]

In case it wasn't clear; it is thought that the RasperryPi graphics driver will be open-source, but the firmware will not be. Like Noveau, not like propriatary Nvidia.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought 640k was enough for anybody.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[drinkypoo]

There's no shortage of markets for these devices. Casemodders will buy them to run secondary displays. They will make fantastic computers for cars and even motorcycles (the little one ought to be trivial to fit in someplace.) A lot of people will be able to use them as a media player, myself included -- one that makes no noise, consumes practically no power compared to the display, and can be affixed to the rear of the television with a zip tie or a paper clip. The portability means being able to take the whole computer with you quite reasonably, so you know you're not running on compromised hardware.

I imagine that it ought to run an older version of Android quite satisfactorily...

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[drinkypoo]

It ought to be pretty amazingly trivial on an Arduino that has the right hardware, actually -- but only because you can just snarf up some examples and tweak them. On the raspberry Pi you could do it with a small shell script.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Arlet]

Since the point of this whole design is to learn kids about programming, wouldn't it be much better to actually pick an open CPU ?

Sure, this device lets you play a h.264 stream, 1080p, on your TV. Whoop-di-doo.. but there's nothing you can hack or investigate to understand how it works. Video data disappears into an undocumented black box, and a TV signal comes out the other end.

If you want kids to learn how to program, give them an ARM7 with a TFT panel, where they can call putpixel(x,y,col). Not nearly as fast and capable, but you can see how it works, and tinker with it. Or give them a laptop, and send them here: http://scratch.mit.edu/

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[drinkypoo]

What would you propose to do with it? Firefox and OpenOffice won't run. The Ubuntu LiveCD won't even run on 512MB (I found out by trial and error).

LiveCDs use a lot of memory. In 128MB it is totally possible to run Debian and Iceweasel and get OK performance. If you don't have lightning-fast storage, you will want to disable disk caching in firefox, because you won't have any free memory to do disk caching at the block level.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[vlm]

treating ARM boards like contemporary desktops just isn't going to work

Do I have permission to treat it as a 2002 desktop, which for 99% of the population is exactly the same as a 2012 desktop?

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it let is you see extra apostrophes? Looks like "no".

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[LWATCDR]

Solution.
The people that sell the Raspberry Pi simply off a tested wifi adaptor and bluetooth adaptor that is plug and play.
The target was lowest possible price. The ram can be an issue for some software like browsers and Flash "Yes I hate it as well but..". But they couldn't meet their price goal with more ram but that really should be prefaced with the word yet.
This is their first model and it is targeted at the very low end market. Give them time...
Frankly I would love to see them do something like the BeagleBoard or PandaBoard but with Giga E, 4+ SATA ports and DIMM slots. and a Mini ITX form factor. That would make for a great NAS, or desktop. If they could get the price down to say $100 I think it could be very popular.
But give them time and don't crab about a $35 system that lacks WiFi.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[realityimpaired]

Sure. 700MHz processor with 256MB of RAM is just about on the money for a 2001-2002 desktop, too. With the right OS and software that's properly designed for the system's capability, that would run quite well. That probably means you'd be using a browser like Midori rather than Firefox, but you can still quite easily shoehorn a full modern OS, complete with compositing effects, into less than that. You just need to pick the right desktop environment for the job. Heck, the laptop I'm typing this on is only using 280MB of RAM right now, and that's with Pidgin and Firefox with 5 tabs (including Facebook and GMail) open, and I'm not even trying to restrict memory use.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Hatta]

A core 2 duo is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude more hardware than you need to handle basic office tasks. But the hardware is cheap and available, and people are more comfortable with a fat software stack. Sometimes the best tool for the job depends on economic and social factors more than just plain hardware.

Also, FWIW, you can't ssh into an Arduino.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[tp1024]

That doesn't change a thing about the cost of the energy used by the computer.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[simcop2387]

Only if you've got an NVIDIA Graphics card. Currently it refuses to support anything but NVIDIA's implementation of VDPAU.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[mollymoo]

There is library code for both platforms that does the hard work, but it probably would be easier and prettier in Python on a Pi than C on an Ardunio.

Now, how about running an interrupt-driven loop at 5 kHz to bit-bang the RF protocol for your central heating timer? Pretty standard stuff on a microcontroller, but I wouldn't like to try that on Linux. On an MCU not only do you have peripherals like PWM units and UARTs you can use to relax the timing requirements for your code, but you have much more predictable interrupt response anyway. Even if you went into the Linux kernel rather than userspace I suspect the jitter would be horrible.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Wow, why does this post have so many comments when it hasn't even been moderated? Oh wait, it's the first comment (ignoring the -1 Golden Girls lyrics [wonderful show, by the way] posted by an AC just above you). Never mind. Move along.

Seriously though, can something be done about the prevalence of posting in the first comment with a score >= 2? It buries high quality posts at the bottom, unmoderated and largely unseen. Would randomly reordering the top-level comments be so terrible?

It has always been thus... (and, thus, the glee of Frist posters) If I see a story that's 8 hours old or more, I rarely bother posting to it because nobody replies. I suppose you might convince the code monkeys for /. to give you a browsing option that shows something like the highest rated first, but if they pushed that to everybody, it would completely change the dynamic of how discussions evolve on /.

If I see a story that is "topheavy" like this one and I don't like what's at the top, I generally load all comments and start reading from the bottom up.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[makomk]

That'd be relatively unusual in the embedded ARM world; most of the graphics drivers are closed source, particularly if you want video decode acceleration or OpenGL ES.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

I think you're still kind of missing the point of the hardware, however. From their about page:

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity (Registration Number 1129409) which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing.

We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. We expect this computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.

Oh, I do get that. And, there's the other side of it too that simply making any kind of computer with some utility for such a shockingly low price will get them press coverage. I was completely jazzed about netbooks when they were announced for $99, but when they finally came out for $199, I ended up waiting and buying one around the $350 price point, and I am very happy with it. This feels like a similar evolution, except they appear to have more or less promoted the true release price point... we'll see if another batch of $25 units is even worth producing after this one, I suspect the majority of customers will want at least an ethernet port (although, following the commonly quoted logic, you could add a cheap ethernet port via the USB hub that you'll need to add to the one USB port $25 "solution"... I still prefer integrated solutions with well known driver configurations to having my own special combination of problems.)

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

1 or 2 percent of the general population is a market of 70 to 140 million people ....

And, just to be snarky about it, the 1 to 2 percent of the population that is generally targeted by successful companies is not the 1 to 2 percent with the least disposable income. If you're shooting for the bottom, you want to cover more like 30 to 40 percent of the people, just to get enough of them with actual cash to spend and time to notice your product. Most of the bottom 30 to 40 percent in the world are preoccupied with things like food, shelter, and clean water.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

We live in a society where basic programming is as important as basic penmanship was a century ago. Most people won't become programmers, but they will need to be able to use various domain-specific languages, even if just to write office macros.

Perhaps, but I'd say that the prevalence of programming skills more similar to the prevalence of penmanship in the later dark ages, barely 20% of (western, gadget infused) society even claims to know how to program anything more complex than a VCR timer (what I'd equate to being able to "scrawl your mark"), and less than 1% are what I would call "good" programmers (scribes of the church?), who might develop their skills on something as esoteric as a single USB ported Raspberry Pi.

Kudos to Raspberry for getting to production... but, as for my home, I have enough electronic clutter (including a couple of iPod knockoffs running Rockbox that I picked up for less than $25 on clearance - they gather dust, like so much else around here) that I want my cheap gadgets to actually do something useful.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[oakgrove]

Bear in mind that the first iPad had 256 MB of RAM with i think an 800 mhz proc and many people have abandoned their main PC to use the ipad for all but the most demanding applications.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Solution.
The people that sell the Raspberry Pi simply offer a tested wifi adaptor and bluetooth adaptor that is plug and play... But give them time and don't crab about a $35 system that lacks WiFi.

Yes, that would work for me (the "certified" accessories), and I'm not really crabbing, just prodding along and pointing out why I, personally, will probably only be buying one, instead of four or five, at this time. And, also, why I won't be recommending them for many of my friends, at this level of functionality.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[oakgrove]

Consider also that the first ipad uses similar specs to this and people freaking love that thing. I don't hear anybody calling it slow.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[TheRaven64]

So the entire point of your post is to say that, as someone totally outside of the target market for the device, you are not interested in it?

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[drinkypoo]

I understand (at some levels) the concept of trying to create a computer for less than the cost of a textbook, but I'd much rather pay $45 and get WiFi, or even $55 and get WiFi and Bluetooth (or, gasp, even $75 and get a plastic case and power supply in the deal.)

Do I really have to look this stuff up for you?

bluetooth dongle for $1.86, have personally tested with Linux, XP, Vista, and Windows 7 & ultra mini 802.11b-g-n dongle, have not tested but I bet it works. For that little, indeed, I would bet. There are other options which are better-tested though, some just as tiny but with big antennas on 'em. Raspberry Pi B (the $35) version has two USB ports, so you don't need a hub. This stuff gives free shipping. DX also has a variety of USB-connectored Mini-USB power supplies (aka cell phone chargers) in the $5-10 range. Your goal of $75 is easily achievable if you just pick up a cute little plastic box, perhaps a pencil box or maybe an attractive piece of tupperware, and cut some appropriate holes in it. The kids' room computers probably need a better box but don't need bluetooth. I pick up USB hub media keyboards and optical mice when I see them at yard sales. This last season I picked up two keyboards with volume knobs and two-port hubs under $5 each, and two optical mice for a buck each.

Slashdot: whining by nerds

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[drinkypoo]

The R-Pi uses mini-USB power, so any decent candy bar charger ought to run it, at least for a little while. Then you just need to figure out how you're going to run your display.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[drinkypoo]

The cheapest arduino is about $10... google chipduino. This is 2.5 times as much. But since it has 16 GPIO pins available you ought to be able to most of the same stuff with it with similar ease, if you wanted to do so little. And meanwhile it has more horsepower than the fanciest arduino.

I think it would be nicely paired with an Arduino Nano which could be connected with nothing more than a cable and which could handle your I/O tasks independently, freeing your Raspberry Pi for a higher-level, non-realtime operating system, yet retaining realtime capabilities via the Arduino. The whole combo (using the cheaper R-Pi) would be under fifty bucks and would give you massive benefits in the convenience department; the Arduino makes it easy to interface to the hardware, and the Raspberry Pi gives you all the memory and processing power you are missing on the Arduino.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

So the entire point of your post is to say that, as someone totally outside of the target market for the device, you are not interested in it?

The point of my post is that I am someone just outside the market, and if there were a bit of additional functionality supported, I'd be squarely inside. The point is that, if model C or D has the features I'm talking about, I'm in, but if it gains support to control a kitchen blender and an ultrasonic dog whistle, I'm out. They (Raspberry) know all this I'm sure, but it probably doesn't hurt to have it discussed in the open, again.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

No, others have already posted even better shopping lists. My counter-point is that I don't want to experiment around with drivers and unique combinations of hardware, especially multiple wireless connectivity solutions in close proximity - if there's a solution outlined by the manufacturer (or a well recognized distributor, or anyone really who gets enough recognition as being an authority on the specific hardware that their combinations and solutions are widely adopted and tested _before_ I bother with it), that's what I'm ready to tie into.

------

C'mon, let's hear it: "Jane, you're an ignorant slut."

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[oakgrove]

I have my default setting to show highest rated comments first. It even does it for subcomments. Highly recommended.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Telvin_3d]

Well, that's a problem. When you went to school the computers allowed you to emulate the things you saw in 'real' programs of the 80's. With a bit of ingenuity you could make examples of almost any current program. It was your door to computers and the idea that you could make them do all the same things that you saw around you.

And in order to inspire this in the next generation you are going to give them a computer that... emulates the kind of things you did with computers in the 80's? Really?

Here's the thing. No kid who plays a bit of PS3 or Starcraft before school is going to go to class and get excited about being able to access memory addresses. Ever. Under any circumstances.

You want them to get excited in computer science? Sit them down with a level editor to their favorite game. Then when they hit the limits show them the scripting languages available. Then when they hit the limits of those sit them down with some C++ and really open the hood. And every step of the way they will be able to see the real effects and progress of their learning.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[timeOday]

The iPad also has four times the RAM of the $25 Pi in question. It also has something like 16 GB of internal flash. The Pi has NONE. There is a reason the iPad costs as much as 20 Pis.

Also, the iPad shows what can be done with tight hardware/software integration. Who will get that job done for the Pi? Stop and think about OLPC and their efforts to do something similar. Even hardware acceleration for Flash is VERY iffy on Linux. Getting VDPAU to work requires a narrow selection of players and codecs.

Pi is the cutting edge, and is probably doing what they do better than anybody else, and I might pick one up to play with... but you just can't make a general purpose desktop PC for $25 yet, so raising hopes of this bringing desktop computing as we know it to the 3rd world are premature.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[tchuladdiass]

If this is for the education market, I think a good follow-up product would be to add a calculator style keypad, cheap LCD display, and turn this into a TI-83 replacement. That way, since all the kids are required to carry a $100 calculator any way, having a calculator that can transform into a full Linux workstation by plugging in a USB keyboard & monitor would be ideal.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[caseih]

What Flash? I don't know of any flash plugin on the Arm architecture that can run Hulu, Youtube, etc.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Narishma]

Good thing then that they are a charity, not a company.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[click2005]

I know its more power than you need but for $25/$35 I dont mind.

I was thinking of an ethernet/bluetooth device that can be controlled by an android phone.
Being able to switch lights/heating/security on and off from a portable device would be very useful
to me due to my disability.

It might even be powerful enough to attach a webcam for some simple CCTV/motion detection.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Contrary to popular belief, charities have the same basic concerns as businesses with regard to solvency... if they happen to be well endowed, then they could just give the Pis away, but if they're trying to be a going concern based on income from sales, then they have to be concerned with break-even point just like any other startup.

Most startups fail before reaching break-even.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

our own computer revolution started with computers like the VIC 20, which this thing is a supercomputer by comparison

Your (and my) own revolution started with computers like that, there were revolutionary computers before, and since, then. The smartphone is probably this generation's revolutionary computer. The Pi is cool, I will own at least one, but it's kind of like the dune buggies of the '70s, a nostalgic throwback to simpler times, but more a curiosity than anything else. (I hadn't seen any bad automotive analogies in the thread yet, felt obliged to fill the gap.)

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Consider also that the first ipad uses similar specs to this and people freaking love that thing. I don't hear anybody calling it slow.

O.K. then, listen: the iPad (one, which is the only one I have used) is slow. It frags up its memory and needs rebooting, about weekly in my experience. It is hobbled by its OS into single tasking and its apps are all vetted before release into the store, and still they get stuttery and glitchy on occasion. It does some things "supercomputer fast" if you're talking about supercomputers from the '80s, but as compared to a modern desktop system of similar price, it's a damn dog.

Most of the apps that run on the iPad are written like they are from the 1990s, they deal with the lack of power by not doing things that require real power, and that's appropriate for what it is. I'm just damn amazed that the OS doesn't even support decent alarm clock (and, therefore, third party appointment calendar) applications, I've heard rumors that it does, but I've yet to see any evidence in the app store (i.e. Magic WIndow specifically states that you have to set it up before you go to bed if you expect its alarm clock to wake you in the morning, lame. That was even lame in 1985.)

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[oakgrove]

No, seriously...what's your real response...

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[LWATCDR]

The Flash on my Android phone seems to do fine with Youtube other videos. Hulu doesn't work because it is "Blocked" on mobile devices. For some odd reason.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[drinkypoo]

Then go forth ye and read the compatibility list for the distribution of thy choice. Odds are you'll be running Linux, and whoever makes your distribution will probably have suggestions for you. Perhaps someone will roll up an Android distribution (2.x I presume, based on the hardware) and then they will have their own suggestions; if it somehow gets me Netflix support I'll certainly go that route, otherwise probably Debian, based on the hardware capabilities.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

True enough. It also has an OS modified quite heavily indeed to work around those constraints(eg. the quasi-multitasking, specialized, constrained, special-purpose background processes, rather than applications just running in the background, and so forth.)

My point was, by no means, that such a device was useless; but that just grabbing a contemporary linux distro, changing the compile target, and expecting it to work well for heavy desktop use would likely prove unrealistic. Because you essentially can't buy an x86 with less than a gig of RAM and an Atom, and even your 300-400 Best Buy cheapies frequently come with substantially more than that, the footprint for "basic desktop" has broadened pretty enormously.

Nothing stops you from turning back the clock(and for devices with sufficient volume, prebuilt options to suit will be available); but you will have to make changes.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Ye get right on that, I'll wait a while and read about how it turned out. Spending 20 hours of research, purchasing and testing to get a $50 pile of electronics and software working makes the whole thing more expensive than I can afford, unless I have customers buying 100s of copies of my resulting masterpiece.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[jd]

Let's see - books don't survive well in the majority of climates on Earth. Where you've a nomadic or semi-nomadic people (the Irish Travelers would be included), books are simply too heavy to travel at all. A computer is thus a mini library, which makes it a bloody valuable tool.

Television in Africa is unlikely to have extensive coverage and is very unlikely to include core educational material as it is a profit-seeking sector for the most part and Open University-type work is not exactly profitable. A computer is thus a mini film archive, which makes it even more valuable.

The "general population" in the UK and US may not have made much use of computers before the Internet, but let's face it - they had both physical libraries and physical film archives. Why bother with virtual systems when you've the real thing? Further, computers back then weren't exactly powerful. 64K of RAM won't store many episodes of "Life on Earth", although it could probably store the entire informational content of the complete Mork and Mindy. In short, there were alternatives AND they were better.

In remote communities anywhere in the world, there are no alternatives and even if there were, they wouldn't work.

But this isn't a one-way street. 98% of history has been lost to us - languages, cultures, philosophies, literature, etc - because those who were interested had no means of recording the stuff. Of the societies that exist today, globally, the overwhelming majority are critically endangered. Even something as humble as children's diaries, collections of recipes and other "mundane" stuff, recorded in a medium that allows mass duplication on a trans-continental level, would help preservation efforts that were functional rather than destructive, would help prevent the mindless and savage destruction of other peoples way of life, and would allow far better understanding by average Joes that their average isn't everyone else's. And I've not even started on the scientific potential of having an actual database of records rather than mere lists of names of societies.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Pence128]

I'd argue that that's six orders of magnitude more hardware than you need.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Pence128]

Damn Small Linux can browse the web on a 486 with 16MB of ram.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Pence128]

Is YouTube on smartphones flash? I thought they just dissected the swf and extracted the raw video goodness?

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessary necessarily. I wanted to see what I could do using a chroot'ed linux install (Debian unstable..) on my Droid 2 Global. 1.2ghz CPU, 512MB of RAM. The screen on it is of course far too small to be all that useful, but I realized, well, X11 is a network protocol after all. So, I turn on X11 forwarding over ssh. What's the bloatedest app I could try? I decided OpenOffice (well, libreoffice now..). It started, not only did it start but it was actually SNAPPY! Really snappy! I think the 700mhz would be perfectly adequate, and without Android also demanding RAM, 256MB would be plenty even for running a general-purpose desktop so long as you use a little lighter desktop than plain gnome or KDE.

          Wifi would be nice, but would add a minimum of $5 or $10 to what is currently a $25 product. Just get a USB wifi adapter.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Let's see - books don't survive well in the majority of climates on Earth. Where you've a nomadic or semi-nomadic people (the Irish Travelers would be included), books are simply too heavy to travel at all. A computer is thus a mini library, which makes it a bloody valuable tool.

Yes, at a village level, one computer beats trying to maintain a building full of books. In the individual hut, dealing with the power requirements and just the keyboard and monitor might be a bit much. If I were a nomad, I'd definitely spring for something more like an iPad or other tablet or netbook or notebook than mess around with the logistics of a Raspberry Pi solution, in short time, the wires and separate components of the Pi would cost more hassle than any monetary savings.

Television in Africa is unlikely to have extensive coverage and is very unlikely to include core educational material as it is a profit-seeking sector for the most part and Open University-type work is not exactly profitable. A computer is thus a mini film archive, which makes it even more valuable.

The "general population" in the UK and US may not have made much use of computers before the Internet, but let's face it - they had both physical libraries and physical film archives. Why bother with virtual systems when you've the real thing? Further, computers back then weren't exactly powerful. 64K of RAM won't store many episodes of "Life on Earth", although it could probably store the entire informational content of the complete Mork and Mindy. In short, there were alternatives AND they were better.

In remote communities anywhere in the world, there are no alternatives and even if there were, they wouldn't work.

In this context, I would argue that Television is a media of current events, and could only practically be replaced by internet access, which, granted, is doable and maintainable anywhere in the world for an investment not likely to cost more than (double) the travel expenses of a missionary to bring the equipment... on the other hand, an un-connected computer will need a library of books on chip to search, and, yes, the Raspberry Pi is a better tool for SubSaharan library work than a microfische. Are you aware of any good collections of material ready for download to such a system? I used to endeavor to collect such stuff before I got broadband access, since broadband, I have become almost entirely "cloud dependent" for my research needs. Thinking (more) tangentially here, it would seem like a central "connected" village might scrape the web for material of interest to the surrounding un-connected villages and trade offline copies of the web with them.

But this isn't a one-way street. 98% of history has been lost to us - languages, cultures, philosophies, literature, etc - because those who were interested had no means of recording the stuff. Of the societies that exist today, globally, the overwhelming majority are critically endangered. Even something as humble as children's diaries, collections of recipes and other "mundane" stuff, recorded in a medium that allows mass duplication on a trans-continental level, would help preservation efforts that were functional rather than destructive, would help prevent the mindless and savage destruction of other peoples way of life, and would allow far better understanding by average Joes that their average isn't everyone else's. And I've not even started on the scientific potential of having an actual database of records rather than mere lists of names of societies.

98% sounds a little low to me, I'd hazard a guess that 98% of what really went on, worldwide, in the 1800s has been lost by now, and it only gets worse the farther back you go. Records of ancient Greece feel like a glimpse into 0.1% of what really happened, it's like a collection of snapshots, taken from very few perspectives. For today's "connected" individuals Twittering and Facebooking their lives for all of posterity,

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[evilviper]

Or if you feel that a 100W system simply has too much of an impact on your electricity bill.

I have the particular $50 P4 system in question, and it idles at 41 WATTS, not close to 100. In fact that's lower than my ultra-efficient new system, due to the power-chomping high-speed northbridge.

My second suggestion, to repurpose an old smartphone, would get that energy footprint down to minscule proportions.

- devastatingly poor countries like Germany - you're talking upwards of $100 per year.

German voters made conscious decisions over several years to drive their electricity prices through the roof. Their electricity costs could be vastly lower, so I'm unsympathetic. It has nothing to do with how responsible they are, and more about how delusional.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[evilviper]

Sure it does. You can make a good case that as soon as you factor the monitor in, a $125 EEE PC would be cheaper and lower power.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[ogdenk]

Linux-compatible USB WiFi adapters not available in your area? Adding such components would drive up the price of the board to the point where you might as well buy a cheap chinese tablet that has those features already.

Think less PC, more Atari 8-bit. A cool, cheap mass-produced machine with a single port to attach peripherals. On the 8-bit it was SIO, here it's USB - it's modern replacement. I can't think of a single peripheral not available as a USB device.

I'm sure more RAM can be added with a different "PoP" module stacked on the CPU. If bigger ones aren't available yet, they will be. This thing is going to sell pretty damn well I think. Package-on-package....LOL.... reminds me of how a lot of people stacked DIPP's back in the day.

With a software stack written around this device it would perform great. OpenOffice would suck but an ARM-optimized office suite DESIGNED around severe RAM limitations would rock. CoD4 (if ported to ARM) would run like shit but a game written and designed for the limitations of the system could be phenomenal.

This isn't a PC, if you're expecting a PC you're better off spending another $50 and getting a Mini-ITX board. This is more like the "home computer revisited" with similar goals.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[ogdenk]

Sounds like you should be buying a mac, not a $25 home computer that runs Linux.

If it's supported out of the box by Linux, it's supported on the Raspberry Pi most likely. It sounds like you're not the target market. This is a simple machine designed specifically for kids and budding hackers to learn and experiment with such things. Not a replacement for your family PC, chances are that your kid needs Windows to run those goofy CD-ROMs with their textbook anyway.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[ogdenk]

No, that's how you get them interested in HIGH-LEVEL programming. Not LOW-LEVEL programming and directly making the machine do something. Introducing them to binary, hex and basic computer science concepts AFTER showing them the level editor and lame scripting language is just going to convince them to never try to write a 3D engine, or learn efficient techniques for dealing with RAM, etc and you will get a deer-in-the-headlights look for most anything dealing with C++.

And yes, I've taught for a living.

The Home Computers were cool because you could make things happen by simply writing a byte to an appropriate memory address. Really killer things could be done with the Atari 8-bit chipset for example. The machines were simple enough that writing entire applications in Assembler was practical and encouraged.

Seriously if you want a PC to teach people cookie-cutter modern game programming with pre-written game engines get a cheap $75 Mini-ITX board. Personally, the fact that this board is capable of HW-accelerated OpenGL at all is incredible and good games could be written for it. Resource constrained environments are the best place to learn to write a game anyway I would think.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[mirix]

It should be a single line of code on this too, provided the non-existent datasheet tells you where the GPIOs are mapped in memory.

Should be as easy as:

GPIOA_OUTPUT = 0xDDBF;

or something along those lines. (in kernel space. in user space you just write to /sys/class/gpio/something. which is easier, but slower and can only do one bit at a time).

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[mirix]

Oh, you can do this from userspace too, I forgot. via mmap() and /dev/mem.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Sounds like you should be buying a mac, not a $25 home computer that runs Linux.

If it's supported out of the box by Linux, it's supported on the Raspberry Pi most likely. It sounds like you're not the target market. This is a simple machine designed specifically for kids and budding hackers to learn and experiment with such things. Not a replacement for your family PC, chances are that your kid needs Windows to run those goofy CD-ROMs with their textbook anyway.

What my kids need most is a web browser with Flash capability to use all the goofy websites their elementary teachers recommend (starfall, spelling city, ticket to read - they all seem to NOT work on the iPad...)

And, yes, I have used macs at work, and a mini just about hits the spot, I'm sure it would scratch the itch quite well in two or three places around the house - but I'm just too damn cheap to buy even one mac mini when I can get two or three capable Atom based machines for the same money. And, (having just watched Craig Ferguson), the Scot in me would really like the next round of hardware to be even smaller, quieter, less power consuming, and C H E A P E R than the Atom boxes I have been buying for the last few years - so, no, Apple products don't get very far with me.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[citizenr]

The cheapest arduino is about $10... google chipduino.

I did, ebay $33, http://www.geeetech.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=34 $30 (first result in google) :)

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[citizenr]

Since the point of this whole design is to learn kids about programming, wouldn't it be much better to actually pick an open CPU ?

Sure, this device lets you play a h.264 stream, 1080p, on your TV. Whoop-di-doo.. but there's nothing you can hack or investigate to understand how it works. Video data disappears into an undocumented black box, and a TV signal comes out the other end.

If you want kids to learn how to program, give them an ARM7 with a TFT panel, where they can call putpixel(x,y,col). Not nearly as fast and capable, but you can see how it works, and tinker with it. Or give them a laptop, and send them here: http://scratch.mit.edu/

it is ARM6, rather popular design, and you can "putpixel" in any language you want

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[serviscope_minor]

direct memory manipulation via PEEK and POKE, and a built-in assembler

You misremember. PEEK and POKE suck. BBC basic had direct maniopulation via pointer indirection. It supported arbitrary levels of indirection, like C, and so was much more elegant to program than other basics.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[buglista]

Twasn't PEEK/POKE. You could read/write bytes with the ? operator and words with ! - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEEK_and_POKE#Peek_and_Poke_in_BBC_BASIC

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[t2t10]

It's not "exactly the same". It lacks the cube transitions, fading windows, and all the other crap that takes up so much CPU/GPU but doesn't contribute to getting the job done. Thanks, Apple!

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you on about?
The GPU is 100% closed down. Nothing is open about it.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[LWATCDR]

You tube app yes. But I can see YouTube on my browser as well. Android phones have flash now. I am not saying that Flash is a good thing or bad. Frankly I think Java is better for real apps and that HTML 5 is better for video and web apps. However their is a lot of Flash out their and Java is no where to be seen on mobile devices so that is what we are left with.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[LWATCDR]

Yes it is crabbing.. The level of functionality is actually really very good.
As to the lack of WiFi, here is a list of adaptors that will work http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Devices/USB this list is not complete because their are only a few wifi to usb chips on the market so other adaptors will work as well.
Actually all of the USB wifi adaptors I have tired have worked but that is not a large test base.
Just for fun here are two that will work.

http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&gcx=c&ix=c2&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=TEW-664UB#q=TEW-664UB&hl=en&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=shop&ei=rq6uTtj3A9PbggeSrNWZCg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=6&ved=0CE4Q_AUoBQ&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=c7f58bc4f869669a&biw=1433&bih=666

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=RNX-N2X&hl=en&prmd=imvns&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&biw=1433&bih=666&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=9328323554417061627&sa=X&ei=fK6uTqGqOMyRgQfT4KimDA&ved=0CDMQ8wIwAA

Doing that search also should explain the lack of WiFi on the devices. Even value brands like TrendNet and Rosewill cost almost as much or more than the Pi does.
Finding a working USB adaptor is really just a google search away.
I doubt that this will run open office very well and Java support seems lacking so Eclipse.org and NetBeans are probably not options at this time.
But we are talking about $35 or so. That is less than a tank of gas, a console or PC video game, or most peoples bar tabs.
In a school lab or even in a lot of office settings these can be used as thin clients or even a replacement of a desktop.
For hackers this thing has a good amount of IO 16 bits of GPIO plus I2C and SPI. The The Arduino Uno is about the same price and offers A2Ds but lacks video out, audio, networking, mass storage, a full blown OS..... So for hacking projects this is also really a handy little device.
  If you are looking for a $35 PC well this is your best and probably your only choice.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Please don't take this wrong, but TL;DR... Crabbing is a form of relaxation, computers serve a purpose and that purpose is no longer a way to spend my free time (though, it once was.) I solve this kind of stuff 40 hours a week for other people, and I suppose I fit the "get a Mac" profile pretty well.

Thing is, you don't have to wrap it in glass and aluminum and sell it through a trendy store for me. And, for years now, Linux has been up to the task of competing with Apple, if only the hardware vendors would step up and sell solutions that "just work" instead of throwing it out there and saying "knock yourselves out, the possibilities are endless..."

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[LWATCDR]

"Thing is, you don't have to wrap it in glass and aluminum and sell it through a trendy store for me. And, for years now, Linux has been up to the task of competing with Apple, if only the hardware vendors would step up and sell solutions that "just work" instead of throwing it out there and saying "knock yourselves out, the possibilities are endless...""
Get a mac then. I actually love the mac and OS/X is a really good OS. This is a $35 computer and it will just work. Plug it into an network cable, monitor, power, keyboard, and mouse and it will work just fine. You see that is the trick with "Just works". Devices just work for a limited field of uses of you want to go past those uses then it gets tricky. For instance lets say I want to measure temperature with my mac? I will have to find a sensor that works over the USB and drivers for it. I may even have to write software to log it. But it will not just work out of the the box until I add some bits.
You want wifi instead of a wired? Well I gave you a link and two you can buy right now. Your expectations are out of line with this product. Again $35 for a PC. Complaining that it doesn't have built in Wifi for that price is as I said just crabbing about it. I have actually had very good luck with Linux just working for me. This is a first run of a $35 Linux computer. If you are not a hobbiest or have need for it then really don't buy it because it was not made for you. Frankly I do not know why anyone would buy any computer if they are not a hobbiest or have a need that it solves.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Well, I'm not complaining that it's too expensive, I really like the form factor, power consumption, and many other things about the Pi - and at $35, it's a hell of a value for what it is - but what I was trying to get across is that, for me, bloating the form factor by 50%, throwing in wifi and maybe even bluetooth (you can never kill enough cables until they are ALL gone), and jacking the price to $75 or whatever it takes, I'll be waiting for that before I buy a couple of them.

For another bad automotive analogy, call it a Yugo if you will, I'll buy one and drive one if it just had a few more features and power - I'm not opposed to how it looks, or the brand name, just that it doesn't meet my needs right now. In fact, I really would rather drive it than a Ford Taurus, even though the Taurus might meet my needs right now, smaller and more efficient appeals to me.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[jd]

I think we're roughly in agreement on the majority of points. Non-interference is really the only serious quibbling point. I'd argue that we've interfered so much that many cultures are in serious danger of being totally destabilized. Merely leaving them alone won't be enough, but assimilation is even worse. There has to be some third option. Since most such cultures rely on the transmission of cultural knowledge and it is this transmission which is the most endangered by missionaries, industries and governments, it seems logical that providing a simulation of that same transmission would be stabilizing. Although I freely admit that I could be wrong. I'm not an anthropologist, I don't play one on TV and am assuming that such a fix would provide a foundation on which the society could work rather than be a drug that provided merely a hallucination of stability.

An example of lossage would be the Bo people, whose language and culture were largely exterminated by the national government and was then almost completely obliterated by the tsunami. It actually has now died out completely. The last surviving member with any knowledge of either language or culture has since died, with no attempt being made to preserve the heritage so that those descended from the Bo could choose to de-assimilate now or at a future time. That choice has now been permanently removed.

The two counter-examples I'm using are a bit of a cheat, I admit, since they're not as radically different as the Bo or an Amazonian tribe are from western society. They're the Manx and Cornish. Both had their traditional languages and cultures literally beaten and shamed out of them to the point of extinction, but both have made superb efforts and have recovered virtually everything because they both made sterling efforts around the time of extinction to preserve everything they could. Although a cheat, I would say these demonstrate that recovery is possible even at the threshold of extinction and even when that threshold has to be crossed for a while. Extinction need not be permanent, provided there's enough there that it doesn't matter if you're learning from a person or a tape.

And that is the key question. IS it ever possible to provide enough that it doesn't matter who/what you are learning from, in the general case? Obviously it is in specific cases, but if it is not in the general case then this strategy is a failure and bridging the gaps won't be possible. (And, yes, every gap would have to be bridged in its entirety to be able to synthetically revive an actual society and not merely RenFair it, so by "general case" I don't just mean every culture but also every aspect of every culture.)

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

I guess, in the case of the Cornish and similar, if a culture is strong enough to stand up for itself in the face of "Western temptation," then it has a good chance of survival, and better with tools like the Pi. Most places I have visited (including the Hawaiian Islands) are losing their youth to the West, losing them through the television, cell-phone, and the glitter of the shopping mall. Growing up in Florida, I was very impressed by the Seminole villages, with their chickee huts made from posts and palm fronds, dirt floors, with carpet laid on the dirt, a LazyBoy and TV on the carpet, antenna poking through the thatched roof, and blue tarps hanging up to keep out the rain. Sad doesn't even start, rates of alcoholism are off the charts on the reservations.

Not much point here, other than what little I have seen of Africa and (to a lesser extent) the Amazon through documentaries, strongly resembles the Seminole story in many ways, lots of "modern junk" strewn around in a pastiche that smothers the existing culture with the appearance of a western slum. A Pi might help them, but it doesn't _feel_ like a real answer to me, it feels like another band-aid.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[jd]

In those cases, yes it would be. It would be more of an addiction than a bridge, since everything else is being used that way and the pattern is set. In those cases, I haven't the foggiest what you could do other than, as you suggested, follow the Prime Directive. It seems... wrong to create a mess and not clean it up, but it's worse to create a mess and then compound it.

If you'd be interested in discussing this further, feel free to e-mail me as I've a feeling this thread'll drop off Slashdot sooner rather than later. I've been intrigued by this sort of question for some time - for example, could you use the internationalization of software to make rare/endangered languages in mainstream cultures (ie: those already Westernized, Internetted, etc) more relevant through actually being usable on a day-to-day basis? (Of the EU nations, France is perhaps the worst offender at failing to recognize other languages unique within its borders and purposely restricting or even prohibiting their use. The UK has improved and now protects some minority languages but is still endangering a good many others.)

If, and only if, this would actually be a useful approach, then I'm minded to actually start a small project along those lines. I've thought about it for a long time, but I've never been sure enough as to its value to put aside the time it would take. If it would hurt rather than help, I'd help more by surfing the web and doing nothing.

In Africa, where the phrase "beating tractors into ploughshares" became the common way to describe "aid" there, I don't believe it's quite as bad as, say, Australia or Hawaii, in terms of the sheer magnitude of self-destruction that has arisen as a result of externally-imposed destruction. But it's most unclear if even there a bridging approach along the lines I described would work.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[JoeMerchant]

Do threads actually drop off /.? I've never watched one long enough to tell.

If you're interested in rare languages, I'd suggest a visit to the Swiss alps, go see the glacier before it melts, and while you're there visit some of the small ski-hamlets along the Oberalpstrasse from Disentis/Muster through Sedrun. Switzerland actually has four national languages and the fourth one, Romansh, is still spoken there - messed me up for a few hours when I arrived, I was speaking my broken German to them (which they greatly appreciated since their English is a little weak), but they'd be speaking Romansh back at me and I'd be trying to understand it as some kind of Swiss-German, which it is not.

There are probably other places nearby where even more people speak it, but I'm not sure it's as accessible there - I'm pretty sure the old goat herder who popped out of his hut to wish me good day, or curse my intrusion -couldn't really read his expression, was speaking Romansh, but from his general demeanor I doubt English or even German would have gotten anywhere with him, even if he did speak it.

I had a brief fantasy about staying there and not returning to the States while I was there, and the only thing I could come up with as a skill to offer the town was setting up web-pages for the hotels... it was about 1997 or 8, and they still had some need of that then.

Re:First to repeat it in this story

[renoX]

> Do I have permission to treat it as a 2002 desktop, which for 99% of the population is exactly the same as a 2012 desktop?

The desktop yes: contrary to what Gnome or KDE developpers seems to think it's only a means to an end.
But the webbrowser?
When I see the CPU & memory used by Firefox or Chrome..

Broadcom and Open Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll believe it when I see it.

http://elinux.org/RaspberryPiBoard#Hardware_Details

http://www.broadcom.com/products/Mobile-Multimedia/Mobile-Multimedia-Processors

Re:Broadcom and Open Source?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At present, it looks comparatively similar to the situation on the BCM devices that show up in routers: There is a general purpose CPU, with well known and GCC supported instructions, and a way to get Linux up and going; but the further you get from 'boot a kernel image and chat with it on TTY0' the more likely it is that the feature is NDA or supported by a giant blob.

Re:Broadcom and Open Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPU will be powered by a binary blob, no source available The ARM will be open for anything, it boots a binary image from the SD card call kernel.img. This information is from their forums.

Re:Happy Halloween form the Golden Girls!

[Cito]

it's "you're a pal and a confidant" duh

Thank you Sun Microsystems and Macromedia!

[thegreatbob]

For making the internet nearly unusable for many (most?) people, even with reasonably modern computers...(I'm watching you Adobe...) Anyone want to argue against the notion that Java and Flash aren't the most optimized platforms for anything? Will be ordering 10+ of these things. Hopefully if enough are purchased, they will have the resources to develop an improved product line. So long as it doesn't become the 'Yugo' of the computing industry. Actually, I think there is a real need for a 'Yugo' in this market. Referring to its price point, not the quality.

Re:Happy Halloween form the Golden Girls!

[thegreatbob]

How many times will I see this posted, with a basically identical (but from random user) correction posted immediately below it?

Language/Framework Knowledge Is Important

[PerlPunk]

Well, the author of the article is a true geek, because his take on reality is not completely based in it (though I agree with most everything else he writes): From the article: "Do Java programmers make more money than .NET programmers? Anyone describing themselves as either a Java programmer or .NET programmer has already lost, because a) they’re a programmer (you’re not, see above) and b) they’re making themselves non-hireable for most programming jobs. In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t been doing that one for your entire career." I disagree. Not only is "how many years have you worked in (C|JAVA|Perl|Python|etc)" the first question you get asked, but the questions aren't merely about which language but particular frameworks that happen to employ whatever language it is they are asking about. And I turn down .NET jobs. What language you know matters nowadays because languages and the frameworks built on them have become exceedingly complex. For example, one recruiter recently asked me if I have any architectural experience. I had the certs (SCEA), and I had the experience, but the recruiter came back to me and told me the client didn't see any Struts or Spring experience on my resume. Now, that's not architecture, but that's what the client (not recruiter, mind you) thinks architecture is all about. And still, aside from client misconceptions about what something like "software architecture" is, I wouldn't for example try to attempt to say I know Ruby on Rails when I've done my 6 - 12 hour crash course in Ruby any more than I would suggest anyone to say he knows J2EE after he has done his 6 - 12 hour crash course in Java (even if he is a hot-shot C/C++ programmer). These frameworks are complex. If you don't have real experience with them, you are going to fall flat on your face if you are being called in to troubleshoot someone else's implementation that used any of these frameworks.

Re:Language/Framework Knowledge Is Important

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck?

Re:Language/Framework Knowledge Is Important

[JoeMerchant]

Funny, at my current job they knew I had never programmed for Nios, ATMega or PIC before they hired me, and I have done projects in all 3 in the last year. The four companies before that all basically asked me what I thought was the best solution to their problem and we went with that.

Re:Language/Framework Knowledge Is Important

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like you're in the wrong thread, dude :-)

This is an enabling technology....

[hamster_nz]

This is going to enable so many nifty things.... Why by $400 thin clients when you can get on of these? Why replace you tv with an Internet enabled on when you can add one of these?

At $25, it may enable families in the developing world to own their own computer, or be the difference between internet access in schools or not.

I really hope this allows FOSS to release itself from winter hardware, and bring some hardware deversity into play, a true powerful, low cost, open platform.

Internet kiosks will be able to be put in unsecured enviornments and public areas... After all, it is only at most going to cost $25 if it gets trashed...

I say BRING IT ON!!!

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[KingMotley]

Well except that it doesn't have enough power to play back 1080p videos, and likely it can't even do 720p either, let alone video overlays etc. It really wouldn't be appropriate as an internet tv type box, not in that configuration, but I would be surprised if they couldn't make a $35-$40 box that couldn't.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[0123456]

Well except that it doesn't have enough power to play back 1080p videos, and likely it can't even do 720p either

Uh, that'll explain the various articles about how how it's capable of playing 1080p video (via the GPU).

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Osgeld]

yea 1080P seems to be this magical unreachable number that we have been doing for years, or even decades in the workstation market (which this thing would stomp a powermac avid system) 1080 is magical, 1080 requires a fuckton of power, 1080 is impossible ... except the crappy little set top boxes using pretty much the same thing for a high price at walmart ...

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

It doe 1080p just fine. The SoC on the RaspbetrryPi is the same one that powers the Roku2. The RPI supplies a hardware accelerated OpenMax implementation. It will even come with licenses for the codecs.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Arlet]

At $25, it may enable families in the developing world to own their own computer, or be the difference between internet access in schools or not.

Only if the already have an HDMI monitor plus cable, keyboard, mouse, and a power supply. It probably also needs a case for durability.

It's probably easier and cheaper to get a netbook for $200, or a used PC.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Microlith]

And when it comes down to it, the Raspberry Pi was not designed to target the developing world, but students. The goal is to replace the BBC Micro and other easily accessible PCs with something cheap enough for the student to buy (or purchased in quantity with minor outlay.)

If governments or charities in developing nations wish to supply these, they will undoubtedly be made aware of the peripheral requirements. Of course, when the PC costs a mere $25, the entire landscape changes regardless.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Arlet]

The same applies to students. Do you know students that have an HDMI TV, a keyboard and mouse, and internet access, but who don't already own a PC, laptop, or smartphone ?

The fact that few students are interested in programming is not because of a lack of hardware. It's because they just don't care. When the BBC Micro came out, it was pure magic to be able to type something, and have a red triangle show up on your TV.

Nowadays, kids grow up playing Angry Birds, and a red triangle is not going to impress them anymore. That time is gone.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[hamster_nz]

Its design concept was for teens/preteens

"Dad! Can I use the keyboard and mouse that you use on you laptop when you are at work?, Mum, do you mind if I play with MY computer rather than watching TV after school?"

(mum and dad think: it is only $25 (less than a game), and at least he isn't mucking around on the 'real' computer...)

I can see it working. Working really well.

And I want a cheap ARM box too!

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Patch86]

If you follow the link (I know, I know), you'll see their party trick at their trade stall was playing Avatar at 1080p.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Arlet]

Except that teens/preteens want to use the computer to chat with their friends, update their facebook status, and play games, and they don't want to do that on the living room floor in front of the big screen TV, where there little brother can see what they're typing. And this thing is not going to be powerful enough to run a normal web browser.

In real life, Dad is just going to say: "I'm going to buy a new laptop for myself, you can have my old one".

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well except that it doesn't have enough power to play back 1080p videos, and likely it can't even do 720p either

Unless they're lying about it, this video shows it playing back a full 1080P video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgR74Kp6Ws4

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]
  And this thing is not going to be powerful enough to run a normal web browser.
[/quote]

Except, it is. And has been demonstrated doing much more than mere web-browsing.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Arlet]

My firefox is now running at 512MB, plus another 200MB for the flash player pluging, and this device only has 128MB (256MB for the $35 version). You may be able to run a web browser, but you won't be enjoying life very much.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[hamster_nz]

Hey, if only 0.1% of the worlds population have the geek instinct, and would want to play with one of these, and 60% of the world is too rich or too poor to want one, then this product could be enabling 2,800,000 geeks to follow their dreams.

I wish them every success, I hope that you will too.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[hamster_nz]

Strange, for my remote access to client networks at work I use a VM running XP with 256MB RAM, running in VirtualBox on a cast of 1GB PC running Windows 7.

Internet Explorer on that works perfectly well then managing SANs.

I think this will work just fine...

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Arlet]

XP is pretty light weight, which is reasonable for an OS that's a decade old. Of course, the Pi doesn't support Windows, so try installing a reasonably modern Linux distribution in 256MB (including video RAM), with Firefox + Flash, and some other applications, and using a USB thumb drive for root/swap.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[EdZ]

Well except that it doesn't have enough power to play back 1080p videos

Nope, it really can. High Profile Level 4.1 h.264, which is very impressive for a SOC.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that its chipset is specifically designed to be able to play 1080p30 (IIRC, might be 60, actually.)

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[drinkypoo]

It can play 1080p24 when the source stream is encoded just so. In any other case you're going to need a machine with an order of magnitude more power (or more!) to transcode the stream if you want to play it back in realtime, e.g. PS3MediaServer.

Not to take anything away from it, I want to buy at least one of each type (the skinny model would make an awesome mobile for limited-space situations... like an electric bike) but it is fairly limited in this area.

The good news is that 720p video looks pretty good unless you're talking home theater, and if you can afford a projector you can afford enough PC to play 1080p@30.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[TheRaven64]

I don't think that's true. I learned to program - in school - on a BBC Model B when I was 7. At the time, I could play shiny VGA graphics games at home, and even things like the NES (although based on the same CPU) were far ahead of the BBC in terms of graphics and sound. We laughed a lot at how primitive the BBC seemed.

But that red triangle? It wasn't cool because it was a red triangle. It was cool because I made a red triangle. The existence of better systems didn't take away the feeling of achievement any more than the existence of Leonardo Da Vinci or William Shakespeare didn't take away the experience of producing a painting or writing a story (the fact that I sucked at painting did, but that's unrelated).

I wrote games on the BBC, and on other computers of a similar level while at school. They weren't good, but they were games that I thought of and that I created. The same was true with meccano and lego. Toy shops were full of toys that were better than things that I could make with a construction set, but that didn't make the construction sets less fun, because I could make things that weren't in the shops, and were things I had thought of.

Children, at the age when we were introduced to the BBC, have a lot of imagination. The most fun toys were the ones we made ourselves. It didn't matter that they weren't as shiny or polished as the ones our parents bought us, it mattered because they were really ours. And, according to a report that was linked to here a few months ago, that isn't something children grow out of: adults value things that they made more than things that they bought too.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Arlet]

I tried it with my own kids. I showed them my FPGA replica of my first 8-bit computer, and it took about 2 yawns and 1 minute before they went off to do something else.

They played with Scratch for a while, and now they're busy with Minecraft.

There are so many interactive Flash games on-line, even fairly good educational ones, like Scratch, that a red triangle isn't going to fascinate them anymore.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[LWATCDR]

The BeeBe was a bit on the expensive side. It was a very cool machine but I would say this is more like the ZX-81 if you want to keep it British or the Commodore-64. Funny thing is that this is cheaper than both of those machines.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[the_leander]

There are plenty of modern distros out there that will work quite comfortably with "only" 256Mb of ram.

And Firefox is not the be all and end all of browsing. There are faster, lighter browsers out there that could fulfil that role just as well... Practically anything using Webkit for it's engine for starters....

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Arlet]

I have no doubt you can make something work on the hardware, but I don't think you're going to end up with something that's very attractive to a modern teenager who wants to do the same things their friend is doing who can afford a proper laptop running Win7.

And for the more adventurous hacker kids who enjoy taking things apart, a computer that basically consists of a single SoC without documentation isn't very attractive either.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[TheRaven64]

You talk as if the only options are an 8-bit computer from the '80s or a modern Flash game. There is a reason why the Raspberry Pi isn't using a 6502 - technology has moved on. Why not show them something like Squeak eToys? It lets them produce things of the same complexity as a modern Flash game and also teaches them modern object-oriented programming.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

> Do you know students that have an HDMI TV, a keyboard and mouse, and internet access, but who don't already own a PC, laptop, or smartphone?

Obviously nobody has a keyboard, mouse and internet access but no computer. But there don't need to be weird people who already own all the peripherals and are just somehow missing a computer, for a market for this device to exist. Your argument would be ridiculous even if you weren't exaggerating the peripheral requirements. (An HDMI TV isn't required; any TV or monitor with composite video or DVI will do.)

Even if we add $20 for keyboard+mouse+power, and another $100 or so for a monitor, this is still cheaper than any new computer. I can see it being useful as a thin client for education.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[the_leander]

but I don't think you're going to end up with something that's very attractive to a modern teenager who wants to do the same things their friend is doing who can afford a proper laptop running Win7..

Unless you're talking about games, there isn't a whole lot this thing won't be able to handle that you'd usually do on an entry level Win7 laptop... Browsing Facebook, watching youtube vids and typing up the odd bit of homework would be well within the capabilities of this device.

700Mhz and 256Mb of ram is a huge amount of resource to work with if you have even the slightest of clues when it comes to linux distributions. And lets face it here, anyone buying one of these, is likely to fall into that category.

I doubt we'll be seeing these things on supermarket shelves any time soon.

And for the more adventurous hacker kids who enjoy taking things apart, a computer that basically consists of a single SoC without documentation isn't very attractive either.

And what of those who aren't "more adventurous"? The case modders, those wanting to learn about alternate architectures? Whilst the GPU may or may not become open source in the future, the cpu it's bolted to has plenty of documentation to go with it.

Hell, this is even before we start considering the possibility of Android working on it. At which point, things get very interesting.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Arlet]

Yes. Technology has moved on. Sitting in front of the TV with a bare board and a mess of wires isn't very appealing, compared to sitting with a laptop at a desk, running a fast and modern OS and applications.

If you add up all the costs for the Pi, the price difference isn't all that interesting either. The laptop will cost a bit more, but you'll get more memory, a real hard drive, and it will run (Open)Office, so you can write your school reports with it, as well as all kinds of IM software teenagers want to use.

For any kind of hardware tinkering, the Pi is very closed, and doesn't offer much interesting I/O. Also, if you make something useful, you can't make your own hardware based on it. With the Arduino, you can buy the same CPU as a single part, and make your own design. The SoC that the Pi uses isn't for sale in single quantities, and it's fine pitch BGA, so you wouldn't be able to use it anyway.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[oakgrove]

I use Midori on all ofmy low power devices and it renders web pages at full fidelity. It even supports eextensions. It uses much less memory than Firefox and runs much ffaster.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[oakgrove]

I run debian stable on lowpower arm socs all of the time with openbox, fbpanel, and Midori. I can browse the web aall day with perfect fidelity while staying ununder 60 MB of RAM and it is much faster than firefox. Idling at the desktop with nothing running uses 17 MB on a good day.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Arlet]

Unless you're talking about games, there isn't a whole lot this thing won't be able to handle that you'd usually do on an entry level Win7 laptop

An entry level Win7 laptop will run Windows, for starters. Plus it will run a lot faster. And of course, teenagers want to play games, too.

the cpu it's bolted to has plenty of documentation to go with it.

Really? I tried the Broadcom site, and I couldn't find anything. Do you have a link ?

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Arlet]

How much do the Flash/Java plugins use ?

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[oakgrove]

About as much as they use on my ipad. Namely zero. Doesn't seem to be hurting Apple's bottom line.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[wjwlsn]

You only really mentioned stationary uses. Their FAQ specifically mentions that it should run well off 4 AA batteries and that wifi can be added via USB.

At $25 per unit, I can easily see myself carrying a couple of these around with me all the time. I'm just starting to think of all he interesting things I could do...

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll certainly make an excellent PirateBox. All that's missing on the hardware side of the equation is high-capacity, low-powered, long-term storage. Why aren't there any 1TB SD cards?

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw this in person at Arm Tech Con. I spoke with Eben, heard his speech, watched the device playing quake 3 at a pretty good frame rate, saw a full X desktop that was responsive, saw smooth 1080p playback.

What was that about red triangles vs angry birds? The GPU in this thing is iPad 2 equivalent with a 1 gigapixel fill rate. You do know what fill rate is don't you?

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[KingMotley]

Please stop reading the articles and completely invalidating my well thought out and convincing posts, thanks.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[the_leander]

Unless you're talking about games, there isn't a whole lot this thing won't be able to handle that you'd usually do on an entry level Win7 laptop

An entry level Win7 laptop will run Windows, for starters. Plus it will run a lot faster.

And cost at a bare minimum 15 times as much.

As far as the internet goes, the bottleneck is the pipe, not the computer for the most part. Lightweight applications on this thing will do just fine. And I guess you could have some fun on that front too if you were so inclined: Just how much could you get this thing to do and it still be usable.

And of course, teenagers want to play games, too.

Most teens I know have consoles of some description alongside their PCs. Obviously YMMV on that of course. But then again, whilst this could be put to general purpose use and probably be ok in that role, it's not what it was designed for.

the cpu it's bolted to has plenty of documentation to go with it.

Really? I tried the Broadcom site, and I couldn't find anything. Do you have a link ?

Sure!

http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ddi0301h/DDI0301H_arm1176jzfs_r0p7_trm.pdf

Was cited in the Rasberry Pi wiki: http://elinux.org/RaspberryPiBoard

Not surprised you didn't find anything on the Broadcom site though... It's a bit of a pig to navigate around.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[wjwlsn]

Thinking about this some more, I might want to go bluetooth instead of wifi to save power, then use my cellphone as the bridge to wifi or cellnetwork. Cellphone or tablet could be used for display and interaction. Hmmm... more ideas keep popping into my head...

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

I was at FSOSS 2011 (http://fsoss.senecac.on.ca/2011/node/110) on Friday where Eben Upton demonstrated 1080p video, as well as Quake III, live and in person on a prototype of the $35 Raspberry Pi.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it has it has a composite video out too, with the express purpose of being able to plug into any old TV in the developing world.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[the_leander]

Yes. Technology has moved on. Sitting in front of the TV with a bare board and a mess of wires isn't very appealing, compared to sitting with a laptop at a desk, running a fast and modern OS and applications.

Because Linux is in no way modern.

If you add up all the costs for the Pi

$20 for a DVI cable, $20 for a 16Gb flash card. Case by dollar store. Keyboards and mice I have, but even if you haven't, a half decent set will cost $20 tops.

the price difference isn't all that interesting either.

Less than $100 verses what... $500 for a laptop that won't die within 6months? Ok, if you say so.

The laptop will cost a bit more

Even if you have to purchase all of the above, it's still 5 times the price. Hardly "a bit".

and it will run (Open)Office

So will this. It's even in the FAQs.

IM software teenagers want to use.

Hmm, linux doesn't run IM software? I must be imagining the Pidgin icon in my tray then.

For any kind of hardware tinkering, the Pi is very closed, and doesn't offer much interesting I/O.

As I pointed out to you, there are datasheets out there for the CPU... Whilst that might not be enough for some people, it's a start.

Not everyone is looking at this from the perspective of "from scratch" tinkering and just because it's not the Arduino doesn't mean that others might not find it interesting.

Also, if you make something useful, you can't make your own hardware based on it.

The designs are there, and quite frankly this is a complete nonsense of an argument. Good luck trying to find anyone willing to build you hugely complex multi layer circuit boards in single units at anything like a price mortal man can afford.

Taking your argument PC's are also useless, because you can't get all the parts in single unit prices to roll your own either.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

It can decode/encode 1080p30. It's the same SoC used in the Roku 2, which pretty much does what you say it can't.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

You've lost me. You say 720p looks good, but fail to understand it's just as capable at playing back 1080p30 (h264 hi profile, MP4 and some other formats, depending on licencing). Yes, there are formats it won't do, and it cannot transcode at 1080p30. But 1080p30 is perfectly possible. I've seen it. It will even encode from an attached camera at 1080p30.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Pence128]

And this thing is not going to be powerful enough to run a normal web browser.

That's just because "normal" web browsers are abominations. Damn Small Linux can browse the web on a 486 with 16MB of ram. This thing is a monster by comparison.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the fuck is 1080p now a requirement? I'm guessing you spend your days watching movie trailers and playing video games.

Video has been passed back and forth and shared for over 100 years now. The human eye can still get the general idea that is being conveyed even if you can't make out the pores on a human face. What if I don't care to ever watch a video on the machine?

The question for a $25 pc is "yes, this machine is adequate to type a word document on" or... "this hardware can handle my facebook".

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[Anonymous Coward]

It can play 1080p24 when the source stream is encoded just so. In any other case you're going to need a machine with an order of magnitude more power (or more!) to transcode the stream if you want to play it back in realtime, e.g. PS3MediaServer.

Not to take anything away from it, I want to buy at least one of each type (the skinny model would make an awesome mobile for limited-space situations... like an electric bike) but it is fairly limited in this area.

The good news is that 720p video looks pretty good unless you're talking home theater, and if you can afford a projector you can afford enough PC to play 1080p@30.

Why do people always say "If you can afford X you can afford Y"? What if you spend most of your free money on X and your 10 $currency short of being able to afford Y?

I wish i could afford a sound system that cost as much as my car.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[drinkypoo]

1080p30 is perfectly possible. I've seen it.

OK, they only said 1080p24 on the site, and I haven't seen it, so I can only go by what they have announced.

Re:This is an enabling technology....

[LingNoi]

Well except that it doesn't have enough power to play back 1080p videos

Yes it does, right there in the summary you didn't read.

Do you think anyone here is fooled?

[Anonymous Coward]

2Gb to surf the net?
Do you think anyone here is so technically incompetent they're fooled by salesmans patter?

Re:Happy Halloween form the Golden Girls!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the troll that keeps trolling.

Security

[Teun]

But do they offer UEFI?

;)

Re:Security

[Teun]

An afterthought, is it the year of the Linux desktop when you have to wonder whether a new computer will run Windows?

oblig.

[mevets]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these....

If you taped them all to the back of a monitor, you could pretend you bought an imac. cooool.

Re:oblig.

[Drinking Bleach]

Buy three and suddenly you have more RAM than an iMac.

Re:oblig.

[carou]

Buy thirty-three and suddenly you have more RAM than an iMac.

FTFY.

Re:Happy Halloween form the Golden Girls!

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted the correct version once and got the same reply.

There's a name for that already

[Anonymous Coward]

A cluster of Raspberries is called a "Bramble"

Sheesh!

Keep up, can't you?

Re:There's a name for that already

[bjorniac]

Well, a cluster of raspberry pies is called a local parish council fundraiser.

Re:There's a name for that already

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, a cluster of raspberry pies is called a local parish council fundraiser.

or a bakery. That one rolls off the tongue a bit easier.

I hope they get some better coverage...

[Corse32]

Sounds like an interesting project from what I can tell, but the posted article is... Not great.

What happened to learning about computers?

[Anonymous Coward]

This mini-PC is cool and what not, but after watching the video I wonder what the heck ever happened to using a computer for something other than Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds from gamespot.com.

This world is based on computers in one way or another. If we are going to teach another generation of kids about new technology, let's not just talk to them about Facebook and Twitter. Let's teach them the fundamentals of what makes those things possible. I'm sure you can find a cheap(er) way to do that, even if this "PC" is "25" "dollars".

Re:What happened to learning about computers?

[TheRaven64]

That's just marketing. If you're going to get the computer into schools where it can be used for interesting things, then you have to show that it can also be used for things that the head teacher and the governors understand...

Re:What happened to learning about computers?

[PPH]

Sorry. What's inside computers is proprietary. Protected from reverse engineering (what you call learning) by DMCA, and soon the Protect IP Act. We don't even want you changing the batteries.

All you little E-Parasites that want more than PowerPoint and Excel courses in school must be up to no good. Now go play with your iPhones and don't you dare jail break them.

Hasn't it got through yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

5 topics covering the Raspberry Pi on Slashdot, one even a QA with Eben Upton and the mass of slashdotters decry it because it has no relevance to THEM. I know that RTFA, or even doing a bit of background reading on the Raspberry Pi website is an article of faith amongst the more blinkered slashdotters but a little intelligence isn't a lot to ask for, is it?

Just pop over there and find:

Its for Education
Its to encourage youngsters to explore computing and programming without interfering with the family PC
Its cheap so its almost pocket money pricing
Most TVs from the past 5 years support HDMI
Most TVs from the past 10 years have either SCART or composite video/audio in.
It has worldwide application, not just the "third world"; not everyone is on the Slashdot median income.
The current worry is that the initial manufacturing run, and probably its follow up won't be able to cope with demand.

For a technical lot, some Slashdotters seem to be woefully ignorant about SoC and PoP technology. Suffice to say, 256Mb is the largest available RAM that comes in under the price points. 512Mb is currently stratospheric. Its not like adding some DIMM, you know. Oh well, the more idiots that don't buy Pi, the more there is for the rest of us! :-)

Re:Hasn't it got through yet?

[MightyMartian]

Well this Slashdotter thinks it's damn cool and is planning on picking up a couple of them and maybe a third to give a try at work to test out to see if it could replace our aging public-use computers (we have about 20 such computers, all early to mid-2000s Dells). For years I was running a Pentium III with 256mb of RAM and using OpenOffice, Firefox and mplayer without a hitch. This wee beastie has to be faster than that machine. My thoughts were to retire the Dells, toss these fellers in, which gives our clients basic surfing and document editing, which is all they need. If a Samba client can run on them, so much the better, and then I can use a central document repository.

And at home, well, I've got a few spare USB WiFi adapters, and will get a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and plug the damned thing into my TV for general surfing and the like.

Open Hardware?

[wanzeo]

At one time I seem to remember reading that the they were going to release it under an open-hardware license similar to what Arduino does. But I can't seem to find anything about it now. Was that a marketing ploy or a figment of my imagination?

Re:Open Hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno.

But good luck sourcing the components (eg the SoC) at a meaningful price! Oh, and have fun trying to solder the thing to a stripboard!

Re:Open Hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

I spoke with Eben at Arm Tech Con. You remembered correctly. Give em a little time. The hardware isn't finished yet. I saw an alpha prototype that he said they had made about 30 of. They are ironing out glitches before the first run of 10,000.

Also I'm very surprised and irritated at so much negativity and cynicism I'm reading inthese threads. The Raspberry Pi foundation is a charity. They aren't looking to "make money" but rather to improve the world by encouraging people to be engineers.

SCART

[rossdee]

"Most TVs from the past 10 years have either SCART or composite video/audio in"

SCART still exists? That must be one of the most horrible connector standards ever.

I had a 1081 with SCART, (in 1986 it came with the Amiga 1000 )and the early 1084's also had it. Duct tape was the most common solution to try to keep it connected to the monitor

Re:SCART

[gl4ss]

it's cheaper than individual connectors for all the pins it carriers.

imho biggest problem with scart is that it's not standard and that just because something has a scart connector, you actually have nfi what it will accept or output.

Re:SCART

[jittles]

I thought that SCART was used as a standard input on TV's in the UK and Europe? Maybe I am mistaken... but I know that my previous employer provided enterprise level digital video surveillance systems and they supported SCART in Europe...

Re:SCART

[Anonymous Coward]

Horrible yes, and with cheap SCART connectors you can push all the pins in and end up with a bust plug, but SCART does provide a pretty consistent interface to a TV. You can get a SCART adaptor that exposes composite and audio L/R on RCA sockets, enabling the Pi to connect to old glass TV's without difficulty. (though probably with a lot of duct tape!)

Where can I buy one?

[Hackeron]

I've seen this Rasberry Pi thing a few times now over the past few years and I still can't find it anywhere for sale. Vapourware?

Re:Where can I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not "vapourware", have a look at the site. Whats been happening, is that we've seen the project from the proof-of-concept in May, through the so called "alpha" boards, such at the one at the ARM conference. Its not often that the development process for a personal computer has such publicity! (I'm looking at other fruit-named hardware manufacturers here. Ahem!) The Foundation is in the process of finalizing the hardware for production and quote "last quarter 2011" for going on sale. Latest estimates indicate early-mid December.

You'll be able to buy one from their commerce site and availability will be announced through the mailing list and on the .org website.

Re:Where can I buy one?

[Hackeron]

I've seen that site maybe 18 months ago and it seems the release date keeps getting pushed back. Loads of publicity, yes, but I'll believe it when I can buy one.

Re:Where can I buy one?

[JoeMerchant]

Supposed to be coming next month... I'm not holding my breath, but I do believe it will make it out in time for Christmas.

Re:Where can I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Liz from Raspberry Pi here - unlikely you've "seen this Raspberry Pi thing a few times now over the past few years", given we only went public in May of this year. Still, we're thrilled that we've managed to excite you so much that we've created some sort of awesome time dilation effect in your mind. No, we're not vapourware.

Re:Where can I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't see the site 18 months ago - went live in May 2011. Release date has never been pushed back - it's always been Q4 2011.

I've got a prototype - works very well, so not vapourware at all.

Re:Where can I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't see the site 18 months ago - went live in May 2011. Release date has never been pushed back - it's always been Q4 2011.

I've got a prototype - works very well, so not vapourware at all.

Where can I get a prototype?

Re:Where can I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

While the Raspberry Pi is indeed time dilation causing and mind blowingly awesome, I believe he probably got it confused with OLPC.

Re:Where can I buy one?

[JamesH48]

You didn't see the site 18 months ago - went live in May 2011. Release date has never been pushed back - it's always been Q4 2011.

I've got a prototype - works very well, so not vapourware at all.

Where can I get a prototype?

You can't. They are all out with developers and distro people. You'll just have to wait until Nov/Dec.

Will face the same fate as the OLPC

[Anonymous Coward]

It will get strongarmed by microsoft or the big players to become bigger so it can support windows 7 starter. Or just barred from market entry completely through lawsuits (especially if it uses FAT32 at all)

oh Slashdot will love this comment!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slap Windows 8 on it^^,

oh Slashdot will love this comment!

Re:oh Slashdot will love this comment!

[Pence128]

Hmmm... If you had a big enough SD card you could slap an PC emulator on it and thrash around. Probably take a month to boot though.

Not a linux box

[Anonymous Coward]

The original post is wrong. This is not a 25 dollar linux box in any shape or form. It does not come with a case, so cannot be described as a "box".

It is a fully-functioning computer, and will run linux.

Phil

Anyone else read Doctorow's "Makers"?

[daboochmeister]

Lead stories on /. are interesting today - Raspberry PI, printable explosive detectors, open source hardware in the data center ... feels like Doctorow's world in "Makers" might be appearing, right on schedule!