Raspberry Pi Reviewed, With an Initial Setup Guide

jjslash writes "It has been six years in the making, with the original goal of the project intending to reignite computer programming in schools across the country. Despite those honorable intentions, the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer has captured the imagination of programmers, consumers and tinkerers alike, resulting in unprecedented demand for the product. Last month the first 10,000 credit-card sized computers were set to make their way to those who pre-ordered them back in February. TechSpot takes a look at the Pi Model B, covering the basic steps for setting up the computer, as well as basic post-installation tasks those first using it might encounter."

Comments

I'm still waiting

[richardkelleher]

I'm looking forward to a chance to play with one of these. Put my name on the list months ago, but haven't peculated up to the top yet. Soon I hope.

Re:I'm still waiting

[Adriax]

I just got an update email, week of june 29th. It may be nearly half a year after I ordered, but damn it'll be cool to play with finally.

Re:I'm still waiting

[lobiusmoop]

TFA is wrong in saying "When the first 10,000 devices shipped in mid-April", Only around 1500 devices were shipped in April I believe, with another 8000 going out during May. This is because the ethernet jack had to be replaced by hand on all 10,000 initial boards which takes a lot of man-hours (more likely woman-hours) to do, and so was done in 2 stages.

Re:I'm still waiting

[Canazza]

I should be getting mine next week, as are alot of other people, and I pre-ordered mine on the morning of day one (after much wrestling with Farnell's ordering system breaking under the massive load :D).

Re:I'm still waiting

[nothajan]

haven't peculated up to the top yet. Soon I hope.

Peculating is what many CxOs do when they get to the top. I suspect rather, that you are trying to 'percolate'.

Re:I'm still waiting

[richardkelleher]

Thanks, the combination of spell check, auto complete and me not paying attention got me again.

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you can buy an entire computer for less than a license for the Windows operating system.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now"? Uhh, it has been possible for a few years now to get dirt-cheap smart phones that are well under $100, and still quite powerful. They've got more processing power and memory than the average desktop of 8 to 10 years ago. You can still buy those old desktops these days, of course. You can pick them up for $10 to $20 a piece at many thrift stores and used computer dealers. They can usually run Windows XP just fine, and they're quite able to handle Linux. So I'm not sure why you're just discovering now that cheap hardware exists. It's been around for a long time.

Re:Interesting

[girlintraining]

Now you can buy an entire computer for less than a license for the Windows operating system.

You've been able to do that since the turn of the century. Here's the sad part: Long after every computer that can run any of the windows operating systems to date have been put in landfills or as non-working museum exhibits, and everyone who reads this today is dead -- it'll still be illegal to give it to a friend.

Re:Interesting

[Osgeld]

now? I gave away a 800mhz P3 with 512 megs of ram 3 years ago, sure its not a credit card, but it was a pizza box

just cause you make it small does not mean its the only thing available

(ps waiting on my pi)

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine how many you can buy in relation to an Apple Macintosh "license"

Re:Interesting

[fragMasterFlash]

Its been a few years since I left the embedded space (take a hint, recruiter-droids!) but per-device Windows license pricing broke down along the following lines:

Windows CE: $5
Windows XP Embedded: $40

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

And well it should be. Friends don't do things like that to friends.

Re:Interesting

[blind biker]

You've been able to do that since the turn of the century. Here's the sad part: Long after every computer that can run any of the windows operating systems to date have been put in landfills or as non-working museum exhibits, and everyone who reads this today is dead -- it'll still be illegal to give it to a friend if you live in the USA .

In Finland, and most other countries in Europe (all countries in Europe?) when you buy software, you own it. You can resell it or give it away as a gift, and Microsoft can do fuck-all about it.

Re:Interesting

[TheRaven64]

The license for the last version of OS X was about $25. The dongle, however, was a lot more expensive.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha brilliant!

Re:Interesting

[catmistake]

...it'll still be illegal to give it to a friend

Also, I should think, impossible... unless there is some other definition for friend of which I am unaware.

Re:Interesting

[arth1]

They can usually run Windows XP just fine, and they're quite able to handle Linux.

I'd switch "Windows XP" and "Linux" around in that quote, for two reasons:

1: Some modern distros require 768 MB RAM or more, and almost all of them are 256 MB+, while XP Home Edition is 64 MB required, 128 MB recommended.
Much of this bloat is in the kernel, which even if built fully modular now has so many hooks and semi-optionals that you can't run a normal distro on minimal hardware.

2: The good old problem with hardware support. All old desktops will have XP drivers, but the same can't be said for Linux drivers. (And when they do, depending on the hardware and type, they sometimes won't work as just generic .ko modules, but need special hooks in the kernel, see #1) You have to do your homework to know you get hardware you can fully use under Linux.

I still haven't had a single machine where everything Just Worked, and I've lost count of how many dozen Linux installations I've done over the years. The closest I have gotten is the current "Dell Optiplex n" machine at work, but even there, the front panel audio detection doesn't work. You'd think that their "n" line which is sold with no OS (ok, with FreeDOS) would have full hardware/driver support in non-Windows, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I suspect they really sell them for a market of pirates that run illegal copies of Windows, plus a few MS Select customers who do their own licensing.
 

Re:Interesting

[jones_supa]

2: The good old problem with hardware support. All old desktops will have XP drivers, but the same can't be said for Linux drivers. (And when they do, depending on the hardware and type, they sometimes won't work as just generic .ko modules, but need special hooks in the kernel, see #1) You have to do your homework to know you get hardware you can fully use under Linux.

While it's true you still have to do some homework, driver support is something that actually has improved tremendously for Linux over the past 10 years. :)

Making installing third party drivers easier can improve the situation even more. It would be fantastic if you could just double-click some driver package, enter sudo credentials, and that's it.

Re:Interesting

[realityimpaired]

1: Some modern distros require 768 MB RAM or more, and almost all of them are 256 MB+, while XP Home Edition is 64 MB required, 128 MB recommended.
Much of this bloat is in the kernel, which even if built fully modular now has so many hooks and semi-optionals that you can't run a normal distro on minimal hardware.

You'd be wrong on that point. My system boots up to 80MB of RAM used (full graphical desktop, with several applications open in the tray, using a 3.0 kernel. There is a newer kernel available in the distro, but I don't see the point in upgrading yet, as there's no new support for my hardware), and even now, with Chromium open and a dozen tabs, it's peaking at 236MB of memory actually used. If I was actually trying to pare down the memory usage, this particular distro (which is quite modern) can boot up to less than 40MB of memory in use, simply by disabling CUPS at startup, using a lighter weight browser, and getting rid of a few of the widgets in e17. The minimum spec for this distro is 128MB of memory recommended (but it'll install in 64MB if you don't mind having a swap partition), and a 300MHz processor.

It's not the kernel that uses so much memory in mainstream distros, it's the desktop environment. KDE in particular is a beast, but Gnome3 isn't that great, either.

Also, Windows XP recommends 64MB minimum memory in the same way that Vista recommended 1GB minimum memory: It'll run, but if you're planning on doing more than one thing at a time, you'd better hope most of them are editing a text file in notepad.

2: The good old problem with hardware support. All old desktops will have XP drivers, but the same can't be said for Linux drivers. (And when they do, depending on the hardware and type, they sometimes won't work as just generic .ko modules, but need special hooks in the kernel, see #1) You have to do your homework to know you get hardware you can fully use under Linux.

That's weird. It's weird because every old computer I've tried installing on, including an ancient Dell laptop (a Latitude LS from ~1999) as recently as yesterday, everything "just worked". No need to install graphics drivers, audio drivers, special hooks, or anything. Even the Prism2-based PCMCIA wireless card worked out of the box. And e17 absolutely flies, even with full screen OpenGL compositing enabled, on the 800MHz P-III with 256MB of RAM.

I still haven't had a single machine where everything Just Worked, and I've lost count of how many dozen Linux installations I've done over the years. The closest I have gotten is the current "Dell Optiplex n" machine at work, but even there, the front panel audio detection doesn't work. You'd think that their "n" line which is sold with no OS (ok, with FreeDOS) would have full hardware/driver support in non-Windows, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I suspect they really sell them for a market of pirates that run illegal copies of Windows, plus a few MS Select customers who do their own licensing.

And yet, here I am typing this on a Vostro v130n, which came with Ubuntu LTS preinstalled, where again, everything "just works". It's been a *very* long time since I've had to fiddle with drivers on a Linux installation, and it's almost always because I want better performance out of a video card.

Of course, all of this is missing an extremely important point, which is that the OP was talking about *new* computers, not something you got 2nd hand from a thrift store. I plan to buy one of these myself, once I see some reviews of XBMC decoding performance. I can power it from the USB plug on my TV, and connect it by HDMI to the TV. Plug it in to the ethernet then point it at my network fileserver, and it's a perfect silent HTPC.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

(take a hint, recruiter-droids!)

They can't, I've been out of the game for over a decade, yet they still bombard me with job offers..
I'm sick of telling them I no longer work in these fields, and would they remove my details from their lists.

Re the Pi, I'm on the waiting list, and, as I'm also restoring a boat at present, I see a harmonious fusion of two projects on the horizon..
.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

> I still haven't had a single machine where everything Just Worked, and I've lost count of how many dozen Linux installations I've done over the years.

HERE is were I'd substitute linux for windows.

I have had a win7 preinstalled netbook crashing in the first 15 minutes of use, IIRC while trying still to configure itself or a backup. And the hardware was just fine, hours of operations under linux prove it.
Yeah, win machines come with everything out of the box. After two weeks I reboot them into windows and see coworkers having installed registry cleaning utilities from who knows where, the default search page hacked / in firefox as in ie.

The user is at fault you may reply. Yes, but is it better to teach him how to get linux working instead, in the long run...

But hey, you people have win and can download linux for yourself. Try no frills distros like aptosid and see who's right.

Re:Interesting

[cduffy]

Much of this bloat is in the kernel, which even if built fully modular now has so many hooks and semi-optionals that you can't run a normal distro on minimal hardware.

Pardon? There are still a lot of companies centered around using the Linux kernel in embedded space (albeit, in the smaller cases, with a very different userland -- ucLibc, busybox, etc). If it runs your $60 router and your $100 phone, last-decade's desktop is going to be fine... at least as far as the kernel is concerned.

Now, if you were telling me that the basic userland was getting bloated, I might believe you there -- there are fewer people with a vested financial interest and a lot of kernel developers on staff actively working on keeping it tiny.

Re:Interesting

[jgrahn]

I'd switch "Windows XP" and "Linux" around in that quote, for two reasons:

1: Some modern distros require 768 MB RAM or more, and almost all of them are 256 MB+, while XP Home Edition is 64 MB required, 128 MB recommended. Much of this bloat is in the kernel, which even if built fully modular now has so many hooks and semi-optionals that you can't run a normal distro on minimal hardware.

I call bullshit on that. You seem to be saying unused/useless kernel *code* eats up your RAM, but vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-amd64 is 2.4MB on my system. That's compressed, so let's be generous and say 5MB in memory. Then I have some modules loaded: 6MB.

As for total memory used by the kernel, I don't know how to see that. Do you? Note that there's all this buffering going on.

Re:Interesting

[ChunderDownunder]

Does your system come with a dedicated video card, or use main memory?

A relative recently gifted me a 2nd hand computer that despite my best efforts, choked on Xubuntu with 512MB (I already had installed on a usb drive). That's just with synaptic and firefox running, with swapping. Further, it suffered from an annoying intel driver bug (diagnosed but not fixed upstream) that scrambled text on screen when shared memory ran low powering a 1080p display.

I could have paired it down somewhat but I got a good deal with some desktop RAM :) Now it flies, for 8 year old hardware.

I'm sympathetic to the r-pi project as a headless server or android device (paired with a multitouch pad instead of a touchscreen) but can't see it's comfortable for desktop use given the specs - 256MB being considerably less after video RAM extracted.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure he was talking about piracy, not third party software. You can do that here too.

Why you were modded +5 informative is beyond me.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't because it's nowhere to be found.

Re:Interesting

[realityimpaired]

Does your system come with a dedicated video card, or use main memory?

The Vostro V130n has a Sandy Bridge processor, and is using the integrated Intel graphics with shared system memory. I've never had any problems using external display on it, but it's also a much newer system than you are talking about, as it came with 2GB of memory from the factory. I'd have to check the BIOS for how much memory is actually being used by the graphics.

Re:Interesting

[arth1]

I call bullshit on that.

Try booting something like Fedora on a 64 MB system. Even to runlevel 3.

You seem to be saying unused/useless kernel *code* eats up your RAM,

No, that's not what I'm saying. Sure, it contributes, but it's a combination of code, data, tables and buffers.

As for total memory used by the kernel, I don't know how to see that. Do you?

A couple of pointers:
The kernel itself:
# egrep "(T _text|A _end)" /boot/System.map-$(uname -r)
ffffffff81000000 T _text
ffffffff81e64000 A _end
Unless I remember my hex all wrong, that's a bit over 14.5 MB.

Then the kernel allocation (slab):
# cat /sys/kernel/slab/*/slab_size | awk '{sum += $1} END {print "Sum: "sum}'
Sum: 160136
Granted, all other things being equal, this would have been smaller on a system with less memory, but not proportionally so.

(There's also /proc/slabinfo)

Re:Interesting

[arth1]

Now, if you were telling me that the basic userland was getting bloated, I might believe you there

Did I say that it wasn't?
You seem to have misread "much of" as "most of" or even "all of".

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Some modern distros require 768 MB RAM or more, and almost all of them are 256 MB+, while XP Home Edition is 64 MB required, 128 MB recommended.

"Almost all of them..."; i.e. some current distros *will* run in 64MB (e.g. SliTaz)

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

So, there are no copyright laws in Europe?

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I re-read your post, and my reply doesn't make sense.

Re:Interesting

[xded]

In Finland, and most other countries in Europe (all countries in Europe?)...

In Italy any modification and reverse engineering of the software to improve its functionality is explicitly allowed by law, as long as you own a license for it.

Re:Interesting

[mlush]

now? I gave away a 800mhz P3 with 512 megs of ram 3 years ago, sure its not a credit card, but it was a pizza box
just cause you make it small does not mean its the only thing available

(ps waiting on my pi)

I'm willing to bet that the pizza box would draw 50-100W ie $50-100 a year in electricity, the RasPi should draw less than 5W and (and relative to the pizza) pay for itself in a year.

[preaching to the converted]
What makes the RasPi exciting is its small and cheap and low wattage and a reasonable computer and has decent IO (USB ports, HDMI Ethernet etc) take away any of those and there are alternatives (FX a rooted Pogoplug is as good or better than a RasPi but fails in the IO department, Intel are bringing out a Next Unit of Computing but that is liable to be in the $100 price bracket which is well outside the 'expendable computer' price of the model A (and B).
[/preaching to the converted]

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Which distro are you using, out of interest?

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn it. I read it for a third time and realized my original reply made perfect sense. Sorry for the confusion.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

And the hardware was just fine, hours of operations under linux prove it.

For definitions of "proof" that might satisfy a creationist, maybe.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

A relative recently gifted me a 2nd hand computer

What kind of cocksucker gives someone a used computer as a present?

Re:Interesting

[realityimpaired]

Bodhi Linux.

Essentially, Ubuntu LTS, with all the kitchen sink crap removed, and with an e17 desktop, and many newer packages backported from Debian Sid and more recent Ubuntu's into their own repos. They're building 2.0 right now, which will be based on 12.04 and have a 64-bit build as well.

Re:Interesting

[kbx911]

way to go Fins, rest of the world, listen, and follow Finland, call microsoft for a press conference and tell the IT minister to insert his middle finger in the microsoft rep's ass right there and yell "fuck you windows"

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I read it for a fourth time, and realized that it didn't make sense after all. Sorry for the confusion about the confusion.

Re:Interesting

[badkarmadayaccount]

Just asking: how stable is E17 these days?

Re:Interesting

[realityimpaired]

On this system, completely stable. It hasn't crashed for me ever.

Now... the Ubuntu e17 builds, which are taken from Debian, are not that stable, in my experience. Bodhi rolls their own packages, and usually comes out with new e builds every couple of weeks from the SVN nightly.

Re:Interesting

[badkarmadayaccount]

How good is the installer? How hard is it to install ubuntu specific packages?

Re:Interesting

[realityimpaired]

It uses ubiquity as its installer, and it would depend on which ubuntu specific packages you're talking about. There's an LTS base, and anything that's in the LTS repos can be installed through Synaptic, but there's usually newer versions of popular software available in their own repos.

Also, Ubuntu's package maintainers sometimes have insane ideas of what's actually required as a dependancy for some things. There's some packages in the Ubuntu repos that basically require installing the whole of kubuntu, even though it actually only needs a couple of libs from KDE to run, for example.

What did Larry say about Java on Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want my 2 dollars.

Re:might as well since this may be a once in a lif

[sjwt]

Join the real 'once in a lifetime' club..

Get a first post, modded +5 insightful..
***
It would be nice to see a larger uptake of the RP, a good goal would be to try and get this into the hands of kids as young as possible, so they can get exposure to something other than windows/apple

Nothing new except...

[__aaqvdr516]

There's really nothing in this writeup that hasen't already been covered in most of the articles that have been posted here on /.

Well nothing except some elitism from techspot:

from TFA "We assume you're on Windows or you probably wouldn't need this guide"

Re:Nothing new except...

[sjwt]

Indeed, they forgot about Apple users!

Re:Nothing new except...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's really nothing in this writeup that hasen't already been covered in most of the articles that have been posted here on /.

Tomorrow on /.: "Something something Raspberry Pi, something Apple"
It'll be the third repost of same thing that's been said eighty times before.
Repeat ad nauseum.

Re:Nothing new except...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tomorrow on /.: "Something something Raspberry Pi, something Apple"

Hey, I saw Robot Chicken's Star Wars Triology too.

Next time you copy something would you attribute it, you mindless lemming?

Re:Nothing new except...

[dgatwood]

Not really. I'd expect a lot more Mac users know how to use a UNIX/Linux command line than Windows users, given that Mac OS X... you know... has one.

Re:Nothing new except...

[the_Bionic_lemming]

What do you have against lemmings? Be nice or I'll Steve Austin your ass back into the stone age!

Re:Nothing new except...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed - We don't want a guide, just one big button to click on!

Re:Nothing new except...

[smi.james.th]

Most Mac users I know didn't even realise there Macs have a command line, over here it's more of a fashion accessory though.

Re:Nothing new except...

[JockTroll]

No need to do the Steve Austin: just walk the lemmings into your target's home and press the Armageddon button. Uh-oh! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, KABOOM!

Re:Nothing new except...

[TheRaven64]

Most of the Mac users I know have a PhD in computer science or engineering. Yay for selection bais...

Re:Nothing new except...

[smi.james.th]

Fair point :P

Re:Nothing new except...

[outsider007]

I guess you never heard of cygwin

Re:Nothing new except...

[ArsenneLupin]

Tomorrow on /.: "Something something Raspberry, something Apple"

Want to have your product on Slashdot? Name it like a fruit!

But avoid bananas like hell, you know, the slashdotters and their crude sense of humor...

Re:Nothing new except...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed - We don't want a guide, just one big button to click on!

I want a big button for my "people" to click on...

Re:Nothing new except...

[jones_supa]

Or PowerShell.

Re:Nothing new except...

[arth1]

Tomorrow on /.: "Something something Raspberry Pi, something Apple"

"Something hyped, something trite
something useless,something white"

When's the wedding?

Re:Nothing new except...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well played.

Re:Nothing new except...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does it always have to come back to race for you people?

Re:Nothing new except...

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's the sad part!

*rimshot*

Thanks, please tip the waitress.

Re:Nothing new except...

[marcosdumay]

Are you easily hurst, or just celebrating political correctness?

If one writes a book for alfabetizing kids, he wouldn't recommend it for gratuate students, as he wouldn't recommend a book about the mathematical fundamentals of superstrings for those first kids.

Re:Nothing new except...

[dgatwood]

I'll address your point and the GP's point in the same reply.

Cygwin is not part of the OS.

PowerShell is not a UNIX/Linux CLI; it is basically DOS, which while distantly related, behaves very differently, from the syntax for flags versus switches to the basic commands used to list the contents of directories.

Not credit card sized

[SteveFoerster]

It's not really credit card sized. If it were it'd look like SELMA from Time Trax. It has two dimensions that correspond with a credit card, but it's a lot thicker. Not that I'm complaining, it's still amazingly small. I just think it's better described as "deck of cards sized" or "pack of cigarettes sized" or whatever.

the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer

[frovingslosh]

I remember back in the good old days when it was called the $25 ARM-based credit-card sized computer.

Re:the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer

[dwindura]

Model A cost $25 and model B cost $35

Re:the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer

[petes_PoV]

Maybe so, but that "cost" is misleading. You can't go from nothing to a "credit-card sized computer" for 35USD. If you were in fact starting with nothing, or if you were planning to deploy (say) 50 CCSC's in a teaching lab you'd need to provide all the power supplies, keyboards, mice, cases and screens for the students to use. So reckon on at least an extra 200USD for all the ancillaries.

In that case, it doesn't matter much whether the motherboard (for that's all a Pi is) was $35 or $100, in comparison with the cost of the extra bits.

My personal intention for mine when they arrive (hopefully before christmas) is to use them as embedded machines, as this is obviously all they are in their delivered state.

Re:the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer

[Anonymous Coward]

That delivery charge should drop per unit on bulk, when they finally open up to bulk orders, but that could take months.

Also at least in the UK win 7 is £65 for cheapest OEM version and RPi+tax ~=£30 I can get a mouse, keyboard and a USB hub for less than £5 each even at the supermarket so £20-25 left to find a second hand screen, which is not impossible(I have seen them go for half that between friends) but does require you to know someone upgrading their PC/TV. So it is not unreasonable to get an full computer including peripherals for less than the price of the cheapest version of widows which is no small achievement.

Re:the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

Cell phones are a better value, making the Raspberry Pi another example of misguided philanthropy posing as a consumer product. People can produce a better product, faster, when motivated by profit than by charity.

Re:the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't actually buy the A right now.

Re:the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer

[Anonymous Coward]

... and Model A doesn't yet exist

"Despite"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking braindead slash editors.

Skype

[Anonymous Coward]

What I really need is Skype on it. Any luck with that?

Re:Skype

[Anonymous Coward]

It shouldn't be a problem, eventually. An older version of that chip with a weaker video processor is in some Cicso corporate video phones.

Re:Skype

[TheRaven64]

Sure, no problem, just grab the sources for the Linux port of Skype and recompile for ARM. Oh, wait. Maybe there's a reason that depending on single-vendor communication technology is a bad idea...

Re:Skype

[Bert64]

You are beholden to skype to make a port for Linux/ARM, never good to get locked into a single vendor service.
Or you could possibly try to run the android version on it...

Alternatively you could use a standard communication protocol like SIP, and for that there are a multitude of clients available with sourcecode, most of which have already been compiled for ARM (although you could even compile them yourself if really necessary).

You can even run a full blown Asterisk PBX on it, i do so on a similar ARM based board (the Sheevaplug, makes a very good low power home pbx to in my case handle 4 internal voip handsets, 1 analog line (via sipura adapter) and 3 sip trunks)...

Alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out of curiosity, what functional (as opposed to ideological) alternatives to the Raspberry Pi are there in this price bracket?

Re:Alternatives?

[White Flame]

Depending on your definition of "functional", I believe some of the Arduinos, BASIC Stamps, and the similar are in that range. Of course, these will require custom programming and don't just drop into a self-hosting Linux environment, and don't have video out, but they are fully self-contained computing & IO devices.

While the RPi is pretty weak compared to the current ARM offerings, it does trounce the microcontroller range in computational capability, but its IO would require extra hardware (it's not buffered, etc) to do some real interfacing.

Re:Alternatives?

[Alwin Henseler]

Just out of curiosity, what functional (as opposed to ideological) alternatives to the Raspberry Pi are there in this price bracket?

None, I think. Only less functional (say, 8-bit microcontroller kit / Arduino stuff?), more expensive ones (like Beagleboard), or used / bulky / second hand gear.

Personally I like the Raspberry Pi a lot for its combination of cheap, small, brand new, and open-friendly. Biggest minus IMHO is that it's not 100% open due to lacking chipset documentation/drivers. Which limits what OS'es you can run or develop on it. Had such documentation been complete, this would be a perfect dev board for alternative OS experiments.

Re:Alternatives?

[larry bagina]

Sheeva plug, guru plug, etc.

Re:Alternatives?

[LWATCDR]

Just wait a year or two longer.
Right now you can pick up this for around $60 http://www.ebay.com/itm/HTC-G1-T-Mobile-Black-Fair-Condition-/380435251569?pt=Cell_Phones&hash=item5893b54171#ht_1342wt_1159

It has WiFi, BlueTooth, Camera, touchscreen, Keyboard, GPS, and compass. It also runs A version of Linux "Android" but you can use c for it. One wonders how long it would take to get a version Ubuntu or MeeGo running on it.
Another option would be the HTC HD2 but they are still over $200 but already run Windows Phone 6.x, WP7, Ubuntu, Meego, and Android.
As new devices get bought these will come down in price. I am giving my Sister in law my Evo 4g because I got a Galaxy Nexus. The Evo has an HDMI out so all you really need is a Bluetooth keyboard and software to make an little desktop.
Of course the issues of working drivers will be with use for a while but even that may pass over time.

Re:Alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.olimex.com/dev/a13-olinuxino.html

Early adopters.

[MnemonicMan]

I am going to pick up a Raspberry Pi, once the initial hu-bub dies down. I'm waiting for them to appear in a form that already has a case and a physical power switch however. Shouldn't be more than another 3-4 months or so I would expect. I'm already swimming in computers so there isn't a pressing rush. Still, once I get mine, it'll be a badge that "yes you can have cool stuff."

Re:Early adopters.

[bemymonkey]

Hmmm, why don't you just put it in a case and add a power switch? If you can get it set up, I'm sure you can buy a case for $5, drill a few holes and solder the connections to a power switch :)

Re:Early adopters.

[outsider007]

I'm guessing because it's worth a buck or two for someone else to do that for him :)

Re:Early adopters.

[bemymonkey]

If these things were readily available, I'd agree with you... but since they're not, drilling a few holes and adding a power switch shouldn't be all too hard :p

Re:Early adopters.

[outsider007]

Right. He said he was willing to wait. You sound like you can't believe that not everyone has drills, soldering irons, solder, Raspberry Pi cases and power switches lying around.

User friendliness?

[Announcer]

My 2c worth:

How about making it so that when it powers-up, it's ready to go, without having to set up a user account, etc... just create the image on the SD card, then have the Pi come up to a desktop environment with a few helpful links. One of them should be a user-friendly programming environment that's just a mouse-click away, containing a few useful and easily modified example programs. Make the language something better than BASIC, but just as easy-to-use/learn... "Think of the children".

Re:User friendliness?

[LoneHighway]

That is exactly how they do it on a MeteoPlug weather server on a SheevaPlug. Truly plug and play.

Re:User friendliness?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Screw the children. The raspberry sounds like a near perfect platform for a freedom box. Imagine your own personal "facebook" server that knows how to find the personal servers of all your friends without actually relying on the "man in the middle attack" that is facebook itself.

Re:User friendliness?

[ArchieBunker]

Its designed by linux fundies. Of course its going to be hard to use and non intuitive.

Re:User friendliness?

[kamapuaa]

Yeah, and get 20 extra, because the advantage of Facebook is that random family & friends are likely to have an account, while you don't know a single person who has a freedom box. It's like being the only person on the block with a video phone.

Re:User friendliness?

[Ian.Waring]

There are various flavours of Debian and Fedora that have Python and Scratch already there to use. Not forgetting XBMC and OpenELEC provided as a free standing, auto updated Debian distribution. This little beasty can drive full 1080p video already :-)

Re:User friendliness?

[TheRaven64]

I believe the Freedom Box is meant to run things like a dynamic DNS client and XMPP / mail server, so you can, for example, already use it to communicate with anyone with a mail client or chat with anyone using XMMP (including Google Talk). That just leaves the more advanced features, but once you're using them there's more incentive for other people that you communicate with to start.

Re:User friendliness?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

the advantage of Facebook is that random family & friends are likely to have an account, while you don't know a single person who has a freedom box.

Network effect. And for those who don't want an actual freedombox, let them run an instance in the cloud, it is still better than facebook's model of centralization for corporate stalking purposes. Amazon has tiers that are essentially free for personal use as long as you stay under cputime/diskspace/bandwidth limits.

Re:User friendliness?

[Anonymous Coward]

+5?! Hell no, more like tell the children to get back to their homework.
Giving children the easy route through life is the WORST THING YOU CAN EVER DO AS A PARENT.

The world ain't easy. Learning ain't easy. You make them think this then they are in for a huge shock, and it equally turns a lot of kids off wanting to learn anything.
Give them the most basic understanding of what the thing is, what it runs, where to find information, and possibly even "results" videos of it controlling stuff, be it robots or software on another computer.
Any kid not excited by that will never be excited by that so don't force it on them.
As a programmer from 9, I live and breath it. Electronics, robotics, engineering and countless other things. If a parent forced that on to me, I'd have probably hated them for life, as well as said subjects.
I remember taking apart a VCR and fixing it then putting it together again, when I was 6. I still have it today at 25. Swear I must have been reincarnated from an engineer or something.

As long as it isn't designed by the clueless people who made PHP, it is fine.
Likewise, if you use PHP for web dev, hell, anything, you are a bad person. It is as bad as using ASP.
Every other language under the sun, even Brainfuck, is better as a web server language than PHP is.
PHP is so inconsistent it hurts. So error-prone it makes Windows look perfect. No, learning quirks is not how you learn languages.
Just a shame so many people use it because "yeeaaah open souuurce!" That should never be a reason to use anything, especially when there are multiple better open source languages. (including Perl)
Don't get me started on the developers of it.

Re:User friendliness?

[Bert64]

Not only that, but provide a foolproof way to roll back to the factory image...

If education is the goal, the ability to experiment with the system safe in the knowledge that you can't permanently damage it is very important...

To give an example:

When i started with computers, i had a Sinclair Spectrum... This machine, and some of the subsequent systems i had provided me a FAR superior introduction to computers than todays windows boxes for a number of reasons.

1, this computer was mine and mine alone, my parents never used it and couldn't care less about it... i could experiment with it all i liked, by contrast had it been a shared family computer i would be scared of breaking it for fear of angering my parents and siblings.

2, the computer came with a manual clearly laying out that whatever you do you can't break the machine via software, if you made it crash worse case you just hit reset and your back at the original basic prompt as if nothing had happened. by contrast, a windows system is very easy to break and could be quite complex, time consuming and expensive to fix afterwards. Knowing that you can't permanently break the system and that worst case you can perform a trivial reset procedure is VERY important, as it gives you (especially as a child) confidence to experiment with the system, and experimentation is the best way to learn.

3, the computer came with a manual that gave programming examples and encouraged you to try things out, again safe in the knowledge that you couldn't break it... by contrast, windows actively discourages users from messing with the system, certain files are hidden by default, certain locations on the filesystem are considered off limits and display a warning (which is quite scary to inexperienced users) when you try to access them...

4, the computer came with a built in programming language that was readily accessible and oriented at beginners and also came with lots of examples, providing a good way to ease people into it, i don't think windows even includes qbasic anymore and even when it did it was well hidden.. instead you have a few scripting languages that are not beginner friendly, are not located where a novice will find them and are not documented in the supplied paperwork...

5, you got a paper manual... sure i would usually advocate electronic manuals because they are more environmentally friendly, searchable and easier to update.. BUT, for a novice having an electronic manual is a stumbling block - with zero computer knowledge, how will they know how to view the electronic manual?

Hopefully if properly marketed and distributed, the raspberry pi can replicate much of what made the earlier computers so accessible to youngsters, and teach people to experiment with computers rather than to be fearful of them.

Re:User friendliness?

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook is where freedom dies.
The revolution will not receive Likes.

I can't understand why people would be on Facebook. It's not like contacting real friends requires some overblown web UI.

Re:User friendliness?

[jones_supa]

PHP is so inconsistent it hurts. So error-prone it makes Windows look perfect. No, learning quirks is not how you learn languages. Just a shame so many people use it because "yeeaaah open souuurce!"

Another reason is probably that you can learn PHP quite easily and get results fast.

<?php print("Hello world!"); ?>

Re:User friendliness?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Yeah because people are going to give up the ease of setting up a facebook account with having to jump through ridiculous hoops to run a freedombox instance. Oh wait....

Re:User friendliness?

[makomk]

I don 't think there is any kind of factory image or onboard flash storage, just whatever image you download and load onto an SD card.

Re:User friendliness?

[Announcer]

Very well said, Bert64. You've perfectly delineated what I was trying to say, but with much better detail. Thank you!

Hopefully, someone involved with the Pi will read your comments, and "make it so!"

Ideally, a pre-programmed SD card should also be available, so one need only buy it, connect it, and power it up to see a window on the desktop with:

READY.
_

(Or some other such prompt!)

As someone else pointed out, make a default, hard-coded, "ROM"-based OS for the Pi, which cannot be "broken" by inexperienced users "PEEK"-ing and "POKE"-ing around the system... like the computers we both grew up with!

For me, it was a VIC 20, then a C64. I was not just into "hacking" the software, I was also into building and modifying the hardware! I had built a speech synthesizer board around the SPO256 chip for my Commie64, and had a blast making that thing say all kinds of crazy stuff. ;) I also built a relay box to control lights! (A 4-channel "Light-o-Rama".) Imagine if there were similar things for the Pi?

Re:User friendliness?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its designed by linux fundies. Of course its going to be hard to use and non intuitive.

Mister, I don't like your attitude.

And your argument is not only obnoxious, it's weak.

What is the "it" of which you speak? The Raspberry Pi? That's hardware, and it boots from an SD card, and it doesn't come with an SD card. So it runs whatever you put in it, and you are free to put something friendly in there. Or maybe this "it" is Debian? That's designed to be the "universal operating system", not specifically to be easy for newbies (or to be hard for newbies for that matter).

Now that the Pi is actually availalble, someone will make a "Pi newbie distro" and put images on the Internet. You could do it, if you wanted to help instead of pissing and moaning.

Re:User friendliness?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh good, yet another Facebook knockoff that'll suck a couple hundred thousand dollars and thousands of hours of time out of the free software community, only to spectacularly fail in its mission to produce anything workable.

Why not just call it "Disaspora" - a lovely portmanteau of Disaster & Diaspora, which is exactly what it will turn out to be.

Re:User friendliness?

[rasmusbr]

It's not nearly powerful enough to do all of what they want to do. In order to achieve their goals they basically need to replace every personal service on the web. That would mean relocating a very large fraction of the processing power in the world to people's homes. You're not going to achieve that by putting a Raspberry Pi in every home.

The Raspberry Pi's biggest merits as an end-user computing device is small size, low power and low cost. It's not inconceivable to think that it might perhaps become the thing that finally gets really poor people online on something more powerful than a smartphone.

Then, probably not. The system cost of an R-Pi, a monitor, a keyboard and mouse, a big enough SD card, a power supply and whatnot is more than $100 and by the time the R-Pi's software is mature enough that ordinary people would want to use it you'll be able to buy a half-decent Android tablet for not much more than $100, and the tablet would be simpler to use and a lot easier to carry around (and more stylish and desirable).

Re:User friendliness?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It's not nearly powerful enough to do all of what they want to do. In order to achieve their goals they basically need to replace every personal service on the web. That would mean relocating a very large fraction of the processing power in the world to people's homes. You're not going to achieve that by putting a Raspberry Pi in every home.

That's a faulty conclusion. Given that the freedombox is intended as a personal, or at worst, family, system, it really isn't much of a compute load for the average case. Storage space is probably the more likely limiter.

And to sum this up...

[ZeroPly]

From the article: "We assume you're on Windows or you probably wouldn't need this guide."

It's hard to explain to the GUI crowd why this is such a big deal...

They emailed shipping dates

[enter to exit]

I'm getting mine on the 28th May (Australia). I ordered it on opening day.

Also,
What exactly does "non-profit" mean? Are they paying themselves? Does making enough money for R&D and staff count as profit? It a non-profit doesn't meet its objectives (i.e. the pi's get sold to slashdotters, and schools balk at it) what happens?

Why don't we see a lot more 'small businesses' doing this for the tax break? There's nothing stopping a non-profit from switching back to for-profit later, right?

Re:They emailed shipping dates

[tftp]

What exactly does "non-profit" mean?

Something like this.

Why don't we see a lot more 'small businesses' doing this for the tax break?

They are not on the list, and probably they want to use profits to get rich.

There's nothing stopping a non-profit from switching back to for-profit later, right?

I suspect a reorganization would be required to set up a new corporation, with different name, different charter, its own board of directors, etc. It's doable, but it's not something you can do just by calling your Secretary of State.

Re:They emailed shipping dates

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Also, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK non-profit. That means different rules from US non-profits. I do not, however, know those differences off the top of my head.

Re:They emailed shipping dates

[TheRaven64]

Most of the people working on it are academics (two floors up from me), so they're paid out of research grants and so on. The ones at Broadcom are paid out of the profits from selling the CPU. I'm not sure about the distributor, presumably they make some money, as the computer lab isn't really set up for shipping tens of thousands of little computers...

Re:They emailed shipping dates

[Patch86]

They're a registered UK charity, which means they're subject to fairly strict rules around profit and public benefit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_organisation#United_Kingdom

Where are the mounting holes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are the holes to mount this? I would assume some other entity could make cases n stuff.

I was too

[ArchieBunker]

Then by accident I found the rtl-sdr software radio project. Long story short is that a $20 USB dongle designed for receiving digital TV can also be used as a wideband receiver from 64Mhz to over 1.6GHz. Yes it works on Linux too.

Re:I was too

[Anonymous Coward]

This I will have to look into. Thanks for sharing.

Re:I was too

[drinkypoo]

I opened up a nearly-free Pinnacle USB/1394 video capture device and found an FPGA, but I can't find anything more useful to do with it than throw it away...

Re:I was too

[Anonymous Coward]

Its actually a very interesting project as people now have these things doing ADS-B decoding (aircraft tracking) and even P25 decoding, including decryption. Talk about a cheap, fun, and diverse project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKzii5K3AqA ADS-B

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wShOLgW2tmI P25 w/Decryption

Even better, if you shop around, you can find the USB dongles as cheap as $14 online, delivered. Of course, that will be on the slow boat from China.

sheevaplug is $99

[Chirs]

admittedly it does have a power supply and case and more memory...but no hardware floating point and no display adapter

Re:sheevaplug is $99

[Bert64]

You can get the OpenRD, which is the bigger brother of the sheevaplug, it also lacks hardware floating point but it does have video and audio outputs.
It also has SATA so you can connect an internal hdd.

Re:sheevaplug is $99

[drinkypoo]

I don't see any evidence that it's actually possible to purchase an OpenRD ultimate.

Re:sheevaplug is $99

[Bert64]

I have two of them right here, newit.co.uk sells them although i'm not sure if they have any stock currently.

default user is "pi"

[Chirs]

The guide adds in another username, but that isn't strictly necessary. I expect they had it come up into commandline mode by default to avoid starting X if it's not needed.

Review?

[Anonymous Coward]

I kept looking for where to click for the next page after "here are the specs and we powered it up".

Re:slashdot = Raspberry Pi advertising network

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you call a something about a charity/nonprofit organization advertising?

I don't get it

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Congratulation the Raspberry Pi team for getting it made and out the door, but I don't get how it's going to penetrate schools. The unit's only $35, yes, but by the time you buy cables, a mouse & KB, and a monitor you've spent $150-$200 more. That's ~$230 for a seriously underpowered computer-- you may as well spend about a third more and get a very low end PC. These little machines would be great as embedded devices, but general-purpose computing?

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, the idea is totally ridiculous. It doesn't even come with a case. My netbook was $180 and is far more powerful, comes with an OS that actually works, includes a monitor, includes power, includes a case, etc...

Anyway, it's evolved into a fun nerd thing, just because the idea of a $35 computer is kind of cool. Worst case scenario it can be used as a cheap XBMC type device.

Re:I don't get it

[Spliffster]

Do you know what the purpose of the Pi is? An educational computer for children (like the amiga or the atari back when we were young).

It has a TV out and an HDMI Port. I live in Europe, I don't know any family without a TV (well very few, but they don't have a TV by choice and not because they can't afford one, however they have a computer and therefore a computer display). RasPi is a UK Company. The European community is regulating cellphone chargers. They must use an USB Micro-B connector (with 800-1000 mA output). Guess what? This is also the sort of power supply the RasPi needs. Since most Europeans get a new cellphone every 1-2 years, these chargers are disposable (every new phone comes with a new charger even though the old one is still working perfectly).

So display available, check. Power supply available, check.

Now all we need is an SD card, a Keyboard and a mouse (USB). I live in one of the most expensive places in the world. But a cheap keyboard and a cheap mouse would not cost more than 15 us dollars. And if I were a smart kid, I'd ask family and friends if I could buy used ones (which I probably would get donated). NEarly all families already have a mac or windows pc (but might not want their children to break it while experimenting) mouse and keyboard could be used from the already available computer.

Well, now we have only one item left that is missing, the SD card. Many digital cameras are replaced here with smart phones. It's not the same but I see those aging cameras laying around in many house holds. Guess what, they often use SD cards. But since the SD card needs to be reformatted and somewhat inserted permanently into the device, it might be reasonable to buy a separate one.

This leaves us with one extra expense: a new SD card for $20-30, big deal!

I personally think the RasPi team has a very neat design there, don't you?

Cheers,
-S

Re:I don't get it

[DanTheManMS]

Do you know what the purpose of the Pi is? An educational computer for children (like the amiga or the atari back when we were young).

Quite frankly, I don't know what it is. After so many articles on /. I assumed it to be sensationalism akin to the likes of Bitcoin. I have not RTFA, or any "full articles" on this subject to be honest. Is it the next evolution of the "One Laptop Per Child" project?

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's more powerful, wastes more power, is much bigger and is just 5x the price of the RPi? Amazing, although your puny netbook is still stupid. My laptop is worth only (less than, actually) 5x what you paid for your netbook and is far more powerful, even bigger and has not only one but TWO OSes that actually work.

You're right that different devices can't serve different purposes. I'm on the phone with Arduino's CEO right now and he agreed to refund their customers and close down the company. I'll be contacting the rest of the industry later to give them the bad news. Thanks a lot, if it weren't for you god knows how much more money would have been wasted on this silliness.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello. Please give further insight into how you can run a Raspberry Pi without additionally purchasing a power supply, a case, a keyboard, a monitor, and a largeish SD card. Remember that you'll probably want a USB wifi and external hard drive.

Sure, maybe people already have some of these things. But then the Raspberry Pi is a 2nd computer, which isn't the point of the whole project.

You can't even buy these things at the store, they're not being sold in bulk to school districts or 3rd world nations. All the sales so far have been nerds buying a toy.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. All the European kids who have an HDTV but don't have more than $30 for a computer. They can just order one online. That is great logic.

It isn't sold with a case, well kids should have no problems with keeping an exposed breadboard in good working condition. It doesn't have wifi, oh who uses that anyway? Sure they'll have to put up with an OS that is crude and won't run many programs, but surely putting up with that frustration will be the first step in them mastering the intricacies of UNIX.

All the constant articles on Slashdot is because Slashdot regularly gets excited about educational tools for poor European children.

Re:I don't get it

[TheRaven64]

The point is that the schools can afford to buy a load of them, and can let students take them home for homework assignments. Some students may also buy their own, and then they just need to move an SD card between their home and work ones.

Re:I don't get it

[Spliffster]

Some people think Desktop with shiny windows if they hear the word computer.

The Pi has (for example) GPIO ports along with SPI, I2C, UART and more. If this is not enough, or you don't want to design your own PCB you might add a gert board and you get motor drivers without any knowledge of electronics. Now you have a robotics platform. Since it is running Linux one has a plethora of programming languages at hand to do something useful with these features (for example robotics).

Or you may just want to build an appliance which can be controlled via http, IR whatever (media center any one?).

Of course, it can also be used as very cheap desktop or server of some sort. But for people with an imagination beyond the Desktop this little computer is a big deal.

2 millions ordered in that short time without millions of marketing budget tells me that some people might have a vision beyond the Desktop. And that for only $35.

Cheers,
-S

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

All the sales so far have been nerds buying a toy.

[citation needed]

Re:I don't get it

[madhi19]

Wow like any computer lab that been going on for a while does not have spare keyboards, cable and shit. For the case well you can always tie the Pi program with shop class, art class or even CNC if you got one.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a micro usb input for the power supply which is what a lot of phones ship with these days, so lots of people would have one available (but they aren't expensive anyway), a case for these is in the works and will come with the versions intended for schools (but since the initial version is for hoobyists and geeks many of those don't care or want something custom, those that do care can wait), I got a wireless keyboard with built-in trackball for £10 recently, you can connect the Pi to almost any modern TV through the HDMI port (I got a 15.6" TV with HDMI for £50 a few months back), so you need an SD card but that is only a few quid and wifi £5, I'm not sure why you think an external hard drive is needed though. In all starting with nothing you can get everything you need for around £100, if you have a TV you can use then knock £50 off that.

I'm not sure how the financial proposition for schools works out since I thought most UK schools already have computer labs which probably use VGA only monitors which wouldn't work with the Pi. But as something for kids to use at home without the danger of mucking up their parents PCs (assuming the parents have one) then it is quite attractive.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it really hurt you to head over to raspberrypi.org and do a little reading?

But a quick answer is, no it isn't an evolution of the OLPC project, it is completely separate, the OLPC project is aimed at the developing world to improve education. The Raspberry Pi is aimed at developed countries (the UK in particular) with the goal of improving computer education, encouraging an interest in computers in children (beyond playing games and such) and providing a platform for them to learn programming.

Re:I don't get it

[drinkypoo]

They are adequate for any general-purpose computing you need to do in a school. Granted, they can only do one complex thing at a time, but that's fine. As long as you can read a web page and take notes at the same time then you've pretty much reached the maximum complexity necessary in that environment. I don't know if you remember but once upon a time we had computers with as little as 64kB of RAM running GUI applications with scalable fonts, computers with 256kB of RAM with multiprocessing microkernel and fully graphical operating systems, computers with 16MHz processors and less RAM than the more limited model of Raspberry Pi literally serving dozens of users simultaneously, users running their applications on the machines... And we got stuff done. If grade school students can run Seamonkey and Abiword and gvim and so on then their needs will be served. These machines are even more applicable to third-world countries where they may be called upon to run off of a car battery charged with a crappy solar panel. At that point the composite output becomes very valuable as it can be paired with an inexpensive LCD display, perhaps in one of our cast-off ubiquitous LCD DVD players. I see them cheaper and cheaper. I got one with a broken-off door as part of a cartload of crap I got from the Salvation Army crap release center at Lytton Springs.

Re:I don't get it

[drinkypoo]

I want to yank the climate control unit and stereo out of my 300SD and replace it with a touchscreen computer that can show me maps and play mp3s, talk to my phone, etc. An amplifier is easy enough to come by. I need some way to interface to the various climate control units, hence a gertboard or I2C to some arduino, preferably one with some high-power controls built in to run relays etc. Now if I could actually get an R-Pi that would be cool. You'd think someone else would be at least talking about offering them by now, perhaps at a higher cost, given the demand.

Re:I don't get it

[LWATCDR]

I live in the US and guess what? Everything you said about the EU is also true here.
Yes the Pi strikes me as a modern C64 but even cheaper. What is needed IMHO is more hardware add ons for it. Motor controls and such.
A Pi + Wifi Dongle + Webcam + old RC car == Wifi controlled rover or robot. Or you could use Bluetooth + an old nokia phone for control if you really wanted too.
As a desktop it is going to be limited in performance but still usable.

Re:I don't get it

[LWATCDR]

While not as cheap might I suggest this.
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10585
Plus maybe a Nook Color rooted or any number of the Android tablets on the market?
You would have lots of IO, A touch screen and so on. Assuming that your phone is Android or maybe symbian you can use the GPS and wifi in your phone for the tablet so you have 3g and nav.
Just an idea.

Re:I don't get it

[Bert64]

The idea is that there is a high likelihood you already have keyboards, mice and screens (You can connect it to a tv or monitor)... No point forcing people to buy things they might not need.

Most new computers come with a complete set of keyboard/mouse/screen/cables and people typically throw away the perfectly good ones they used with their previous computer, which is terribly wasteful.

Re:I don't get it

[Bert64]

You can use it with a TV, which most people already have so thus no need to purchase a monitor.

You could purchase a keyboard and mouse, or you could just get a used one for free, these things get thrown out all the time. Or you might already have them. Depending on your intended use of the device you might not want these things either.

A case you can do without, its not pretty but it works just fine. Depending on your intended use you might not actually want a case at all.

For a power supply you can use many mobile phone chargers, which you either already have or can obtain cheaply or for free, most people throw away their old chargers when they get a new phone.

If they were to bundle all these things with it, then it would increase the price unnecessarily for those of us who already have the accessories, can easily obtain them or simply don't want them. Also things like SD cards are coming down in price so rapidly that they would need to keep constantly revising the product/price or face charging an extortionate price for the cards.

I'm sure third party distributors will start offering bundles once there is sufficient stock to go round anyway.

Re:I don't get it

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

You've just explained in patient detail why the RPi is a dandy hobbyist machine. Everything you've said is true. But back to schools: If you're going to put them into classrooms, you'll also want to devise some sort of standardized cirriculum around them, and that'll be harder to do if each whole computer is a mishmash of new RPi and old I/O devices that the school may or may not have lying around. Look, I'm not saying it's a bad machine, but schools would be better off getting a larger & more powerful computer. This reminds me of the BBC Acorn thing back in the day. I'm not British, but the principle is the same. Hats off to the team for creating the Pi; I'm not trying to detract from that accomplishment, only saying that it's more suited to geeks, hobbyists, and tinkerers than schools.

Re:I don't get it

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

You're talking to a man whose first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 :-) You don't have to explain to me how a little hardware can go a long way. I can think of a thousand uses for the RPi-- just not in schools. The costs don't add up.

Re:I don't get it

[Spliffster]

check the Pi wiki. Although not many people own one yet, there are a hand full of hardware extensions in the works or already available. I find it amazing how a small eco system around the Pi is already evolving:

- Expansion Boards
- Peripherals
- GPIO Documentation

Sparkfun has these BlueSMIRF BT modules which can be connected to one of the uarts of the Pi.

Re:I don't get it

[LWATCDR]

"Sparkfun has these BlueSMIRF BT modules [sparkfun.com] which can be connected to one of the uarts of the Pi."
It is $65!
A bluetooth USB dongle that works with linux is much cheaper.

Re:I don't get it

[Spliffster]

Yeah, but the one of sparkfun has "Gold" in the name!

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's similar to one laptop per child, but its focus isn't the developing world - though they're free to purchase them. This is to get computers, meant to be tinkered with and programmed on, back into school systems - specifically Britain's, but I'm sure they'll take orders from anybody who wants to do this.

Right now I think they're still ramping up production of the things, and there's a large backlog of actual orders and/or those who've expressed interest.

The first round of the Pis are going to hobbyist developer types. I'm not sure how many rounds will go to them before they start selling directly to schools, but I believe the intent is for the first round or two to generate some income for them so they can afford larger individual orders for schools.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite, but it does share the OLPC program's fanciful hand-waving when it comes to actual and expected results.

It will "somehow" encourage children to learn programming. Apparently these projects are staffed by writers from Field of Dreams - if you build it, they will come.

Somehow.

Re:I don't get it

[drinkypoo]

The advantage of not needing much IT support to speak of because it's cheaper to just swap a whole computer are vast.

Re:I don't get it

[drinkypoo]

While not as cheap might I suggest this.
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10585
Plus maybe a Nook Color rooted or any number of the Android tablets on the market?

Well, I have a (composite) display and a (USB, linux-supported) touch overlay laying around right now, so that would be vastly (~$150) more expensive than the R-Pi (~$50.) If I didn't have anything the savings would be smaller, so that would make more sense; a used fire maybe. I could use the components of my EEE701, but it's a working package right now so I'm hesitant to disassemble it. I am considering it, however the small footprint of the R-Pi is a major feature in this application as well because if I yank all the user interface stuff out of the climate control module I should be able to stuff both a R-Pi and a small Arduino in there, as well as a dinky power supply which I've got already, and still have room in there for all the stuff that needs to be in there to run the climate control. Then I get the entire space of the stereo for an amplifier, or I can use a shorter stereo and recess it a little and actually leave a whole stereo back there. I have an amplifier I can use but I'd have to solve a noise problem first. I have a noisy amplifier in my truck because it is noisy anyway.

Re:I don't get it

[LWATCDR]

I would go with a rooted nook because it has Bluetooth which the Fire lacks. It also has a faster CPU than the PI. The real benefit of a rooted Nook would be Google Nav.
If you have an android phone that you can use as a hotspot you can use this app
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.comptonsoft.tgps_lite
To share your GPS with the Nook or any other rooted android tablet.
You could also work this in just for fun http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10227
And for real fun you could combine this.
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/11028
With this http://www.sparkfun.com/products/11058
and this http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10530
To make a GPS updated IMU that would mimic a GPS but keep your location for short periods of time if you drop GPS lock.
And Yes I have been toying with the idea of mounting a Nook color or some other 7" tablet on my motorcycle handle bars using a RAM mount or on a tank bag for navigation.

Re:I don't get it

[Zobeid]

It's easy to make fun of a plan that you don't understand (and apparently can't be bothered to research).

As I understand it, the idea is to lower the barriers to entry for budding programmers -- making it cheaper and more convenient. In their interviews Eben Upton and David Braben have gone into considerable detail about how this device can lower both the financial hurdles and the inconveniences (or "energy barrier") that discourage some from ever taking those first steps in programming.

No it's not going to magically addict them to an activity that they otherwise had no interest in, but it could reach those (relatively) few kids who were already interested and give them an easy path. The Raspberry Pi folks said if they get 1000 kids into a programming career path, it'll be a success. With several hundred thousand units already pre-ordered, and with developers working on the software and educational materials, I think that goal should be easy to hit.

Re:might as well since this may be a once in a lif

[flyingfsck]

As young as possible - some kid is bound to try and chew on it and then a lawyer will file a class action because it doesn't taste like rapberries.

Disappointed...

[wet-socks]

Well mine arrived yesterday. First impressions:

Build quality is a bit iffy - the SD / HDMI and power connectors won't last 5 minutes with frequent swapping and some of the solder joints look to have been "reworked".

Connected keyboard/mouse and HDMI monitor put the Fedora image on an SD card and powered her up.... Kernel panic :( Futzed around for a while and finally found that it didn't like the keyboard I was using (generic cheepie).

Connected the network and removed the keyboard and mouse. Eventually booted to a login prompt on the display. SSH in and all looked good.

Decided to try Debian. That had the same problem with the keyboard as Fedora. Found another keyboard (ancient Fujitsu Siemens one) that it didn't object to and got into the GUI. Biggest problem here was the resolution was some strange one (1896x788 or something) which looked awful on a 1920x1080 screen, but at least I was able to fire up the browser and "surf the web".

Back to Fedora... Tried to get into the GUI again with the working keyboard but startx crashed the first time and just came up with a blank screen the second.

Reflashed the image and had an awful row with the password settings. By luck I'd set a local timeserver when I'd first logged in by SSH (no, I don't give extarnal access to every device on the network so the default timeservers weren't accessible). This meant the passwords were set with a valid date. Second time around the "firstboot" script ran, setting up users but without the time being set, so the passwords were flagged as expired and had to be changed on every login - very annoying.

Finally got into the Fedora GUI but it was slooooooow.

Overall, yes it works. Some effort is needed on the default images if it's to be used by the great unwashed. Need to play with the GPIO as that's where my interest is...

Re:Disappointed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the tribulations of Linux, we know thee well.

Re:Disappointed...

[Anonymous Coward]

"some of the solder joints look to have been "reworked""

The ones associated with the ethernet socket, perhaps? Yes, that got "reworked" because the manufacturer substituted the specified sockets with cheaper ones that didn't contain "magnetics". The manufacturer had to take the boards back and fix that.....

As for the keyboard problem, its entirely possible that your USB PSU isn't as capable of putting out the 1A @ 5v it claims on the plate. If you go to the Pi forum, you will find a couple of threads from other early adopters describing this problem and the necessity to have a PSU that can actually consistently puts out about 800mA, otherwise the USB port malfunctions. I'd say the keyboards that don't work have a higher current draw than the ones that do.

Re:Disappointed...

[wet-socks]

The ones associated with the ethernet socket, perhaps?

The ones on the SD card holder look worse actually.

As for the keyboard problem, its entirely possible that your USB PSU isn't as capable of putting out the 1A @ 5v it claims on the plate

That was my first thought, so I switched it for a proper lab PSU. it was pulling 400-500mA on boot. One keyboard that does work fine is a Logitech G11 that has more blue lights than a chavs motor, so it really does look more like a protocol problem than an electrical one.

Re:Disappointed...

[sootman]

This probably explains your video issue.

Re:slashdot = Raspberry Pi advertising network

[Anonymous Coward]

Call it propaganda if you prefer. Or counter-propaganda, if you feel it helps balance the Apple propaganda. Still, at least it's "for nerds", even if it isn't "news".

Debian notes

[laptop006]

I was playing with one last weekend (someone at my office somehow got *two* the lucky guy) and wrote a buch of notes about the default Debian image.

Re:might as well since this may be a once in a lif

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you know how to karmawhore all you have to do is post first.

Re:slashdot = Raspberry Pi advertising network

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. And I thought I was cynical.

Re:might as well since this may be a once in a lif

[realityimpaired]

When did posting something germane to the discussion, and which actually adds to it, become karmawhoring?

The more amusing quirk of the Slashdot moderating system is when you see a first post modded redundant because 20 other people said the same thing....

"sudo leafpad /etc/sudoers" - WTF?

[clemenstimpler]

The author should look a the visudo man page.

No ethernet

[rsilvergun]

Yeah, you can fiddle with them to get a USB dongle working, but it's a pain. Plus you still need to worry about feeding power to the thing if you're using the one and only USB port for ethernet. I want a R. Pi for a cheap & quite file & print server (I haven't read good things about those Lynksys routers that claim to do it).

PS3

[NetNinja]

Sony should put that into thier PS3 so that I have decent browser to work with.

Re:might as well since this may be a once in a lif

[Taco Cowboy]

As young as possible - some kid is bound to try and chew on it and then a lawyer will file a class action because it doesn't taste like rapberries.

Sir,

I can foresee that you will have a very bright future in the legal profession

I must concur

[fluffynuts]

... with the immediate parent. It's been a long time since I haven't have a "everything just works" experience from a modern Linux distro on any hardware I've bothered to install on. And the install process takes about 50%-80% less time. And I'm using the same apps, so i don't really see the point of windows, *except* that I'm a gaming ho' so I kinda need my steam fix and I have a dual-boot Windows install for that. Oh and I make my living off of programming on and against Windows -- but that's more of an indication of the lack of Linux-based companies in my country than anything else (I did work for one -- work was awesome, boss was less so -- but the options for such opportunities are slimmer and I valued personal sanity over personal preference).
So windows gets me bread and play time, but it's still more of a mission to install. And I still don't get why changing the USB port of a USB device requires a device driver install... And why that action is a working resolution for issues with a USB device...

What's the big deal....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I understand the excitement around this. The R-Pi is just the core processor section out of just about any significant gadget made in the last 5 years. There are development kits that provide the same thing with more options for maybe a little more money. I (and I'm sure many other SD readers) have built the same thing for existing products. It just doesn't seem to have that much use without being embedded in some product that provides additional functionality. Maybe I'm just missing something.....