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Debian Derivative Optimized for the Raspbery Pi Released

Posted by Unknown on from the officially-want-one dept.

sfcrazy writes "The Raspberry Pi foundation has announced the release of the first SD card image based on the Raspbian distribution. The image will make it easier for Raspberry Pi users to switch from 'generic' Debian Squeeze to this 'optimized' image." The new image is based on Wheezy and optimized for ARM with floating point instructions, and supersedes the Squeeze based soft float image. Benchmarks show much improvement in performance, and the updated software in Wheezy generally improves the usability of the Raspberry Pi.

4 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. graphic drivers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The bigger performance problem so far are the X window system device drivers.
    Right now it seems the driver is just a frame-buffer driver and the CPU does all the work,
    and is not using the GPU.
    Until they write accelerated drivers, the performance will by slow.

    1. Re:graphic drivers by Gaygirlie · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This is indeed what I said on Engadget; this announcement basically says the team compiled most of the stuff for hardware-FPU whereas previously it was either using software-FPU or had both codes compiled-in, as such this stuff does indeed help CPU-bound software that is heavy on the maths, but doesn't really do anything for basic bit-blitting or linear gradients used in graphics. Most of the "slowness" - complaints I see when reading any RPi-related news is exactly due to CPU having to do all the drawing.

      It's been a long time now since I been lurking around the RPi forums, but so far I have not heard of plans to bring out an accelerated X-driver which is quite a shame. It really limits the usefulness of the system. I still hope the devs do come around to it eventually, though.

  2. Re:Why fork? by vlm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In other words, instead of spending a few hours configuring Debian to optimize it for my hardware I can just install a simple OS.

    Its not that simple. Now you have to subscribe to the debian security mailing list and backport all security patches to your little customized OS.

    Also some day your little offshoot OS will go away or the devs will stop working on it. Now what? That'll never happen with main line Debian.

    I hate supporting special little OS like that, its absolute agony. Main line Debian or nothing, please.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  3. Re:In related news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is weird when you are fixing someones XP pc and you realize that your phone has 2x the memory, a faster processor and screen with slightly more pixels than theirs. A good kind of weird.