Gooseberry Launches Android-based Raspberry Pi Rival

New submitter masternerdguy writes with this snippet from Tom's Hardware about yet another tiny, Linux-capable single-board computer: "The manufacturer claims that the Gooseberry is 'roughly 3 x more powerful in processing power,' and twice the RAM (512 MB) [compared to] the Raspberry Pi. The Gooseberry does not come with analog video and lacks a LAN port, but supports Wi-Fi. At this time, the board only supports Android 4 ICS and Ubuntu without graphics acceleration. However, Gooseberry is offering premade images for Ubuntu. Support for Arch Linux is 'expected in the future.'"

Comments

The More Competitors the Better

[shione]

Good to see more manufacturers jumping on the pcb computer craze. So long as these can't run windows (which microsoft wouldnt do since it would eat into their profits), Linux marketshare will only grow. (I'm counting Android as Linux too).

It looks very probable that these pcb computers will be the starting point towards building smart automated appliances in the home.

*Yawn*

[WildTangent]

This is nothing more than a tablet PCB some guys sourced from a manufacturer in Asia that they're selling as some sort of development kit when it lacks even the most basic of facilities for hardware development such as JTAG headers, or GPIO pins. Call me when somebody actually tries to compete with the Raspberry Pi instead of pulling this jump-on-the-bandwagon crap.

Re:So, unless it's cheap, what is the point?

[JohnnyMindcrime]

As a fellow Linux user, I must say that you are missing the point entirely.

The whole concept of the Raspberry Pi is not to be the smallest, fastest or most powerful, it is simply designed to be extremely cheap to buy but with enough processing power to make it a reasonably good programming platform, especially for kids and students.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK charity, it has been set up to further IT skills in schools, and the reason it was introduced and sold the way it was a few months ago was specifically to get the units out to those people who are keen on doing interesting things with them, and to feed back what they've done into the Foundation to get the schoolkids even more interested in programming on one.

Your comments about it being "nothing special" would be entirely valid were it being sold for profit and you were comparing specifications to similar items - but that is not the case.

Incidentally, I have no personal connection with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but I support any efforts done altruistically, especially in IT education where it might get kids learning proper skills that they can build careers on and make a living from.