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Eben Upton Muses on the Raspberry Pi, Scratch and, His Love For Parallela
super_rancid writes "In a 7,000 word interview with Raspberry Pi's founder posted on TuxRadar.com, Eben Upton talks about the challenges of managing such a successful project, what may be in the Raspberry Pi mark 2, and why he wishes he'd backed the Parallela Kickstarter."
On interesting answer: "We were thinking of booting into Python or booting into Scratch. For younger kids, boot into Scratch. Have an environment where it’s Linux underneath, boots into Scratch and hold down a key at a particular point during boot and it doesn’t boot into Scratch it just drops into the prompt. So you can play with Scratch for six months, once you’re happy with Scratch you turn over the page and 'Hold down F1 during boot,' and it’s like 'Oh look - it’s a PC!' So I think that’s something we’d really like to do."
First troll! You are a bunch of fuckers!
That's not very parallel of you.
That's retarded.
It's like having to hold a button on your oven while it cooks your food.
Switching to the "PC mode" should be *sticky*, like a jumper, or boot option (in a text file).
the stage size sucks. My kids were able to start some really cool stuff, but the tiny stage meant a lot of their projects turned into dead ends.....
That's what people are buying it for, after all.
Unfortunate to hear the SoC can only talk to up to 512MB of RAM. I have one of the original Pis with 256MB... how I'd love a GB or more (call it a model C).
In the back of your mind, you havenâ(TM)t got Raspberry Pi 2?
No, not Pi 2. It must obviously be named 2 Pi.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
More RAM is utterly pointless. The slow CPU can hardly make good use of what's already there. Even with 2GB, it would still not become a usable desktop system. The Raspberry Pi is slower than your Mom's smartphone. It is a single core CPU with just 700MHz and a low end instruction set. Even slow ARM based NAS devices have beefier CPUs than the Pi. I own a Pi and other ARM devices. The only one I'm not using is the Pi.
Must be on slashdot
...how useless and overhyped the Pi is today - and has been since more than a year back - when compared to the some of the so much more capable "Android sticks" that cost not much more. Yes, everyone knows that the Pi has a composite video output and a dedicated ethernet output, but that's not what it all comes down to, especially since most of the "Android sticks" come with 2 (or more) USB ports and Wi-Fi these days. What are his thoughts on offering the barely usable amount of 256/512 MB of RAM and just a single CPU core (spreading applications across multiple cores for smoother multitasking is the gain here, not eventual software that threads) when there are $35 "Android sticks" that come with 1 GB of RAM and two CPU cores that are even clocked higher?
When I first read about the Raspberry Pi I was excited because I thought they were going to recreate this boot to a BASIC interpreter-type of experience we used to have on Apple II's and TRS-80's and the like. That's the sort of experience that they claimed inspired the raspberry pi, and they claimed that sort of programming-based, learning-intensive experience was what they wanted the pi to be about.
So, I was very disappointed to see that by default, a raspberry pi really is "just a pc" that boots into your typical CLI, and the "getting started" instructions actually have the new user start up X right off the bat. Providing scratch and a python IDE are nice and all, but I feel like all the normal trappings of "just a pc" take focus away from the real point of the pi.
No. The basic functionality of Emacs is quite discoverable: You press a key, it appears.
For maximum terror, boot into vi. The original one, without visual clues in which mode you currently are (or that there are different modes at all).
Something like this should boot in python, with split screen, half of the screen for turtle graphics (yes python includes turtle graphics in its standard library).
Then we have something like the LOGO environment of old.
While running a long piece of code it should full screen the turtle graphics, with using ESC to terminate the run and return back to split screen.
I totally back this, it's a really good idea.
Parallella not parallela :-)
Why would you subject anyone to that
"EU: The schematics have been released but not the PCB, and that’s an interesting question. But that’s an interesting question - would we ever release the design of the PCB? The intention has always been to release the design of the PCB; it’s still to release the design of the PCB. The issue is alone is really that you can’t buy the chips. There’s actually another problem we need to solve."
someone needs to edit the note...
On what criteria? Sure Raspberry Pi was the 'must buy' gimmick of the year that tens of thousands of non-programmers purchased, fiddled with for a few days, and then shoved in the back of a drawer.
Yes, for a much smaller number of people who wanted a self-contained ARM card at the lowest possible price, with a modern video output, the RP can't be beat, but does that really say a lot?
Consider the so-called ARM sticks that can be picked up for tens of dollars, and connected to any LCD TV to convert that product into an amazing 'smart' TV. These USB sticks are VASTLY more powerful than the RP, vastly more user friendly, and can actually run modern Android systems without the horrible compromises of the RP.
Yes, the USB ARM sticks are 'high level' from a hardware POV, whereas the RP is 'low-level', but does that distinction mean a great deal in this day and age? We hear a lot of rubbish about 'binary blobs' but none of these ARM devices are anything like the old simplistic Atari 800 or Commodore 64. The driver software is so complex, no sane user wants to consider how it operates at a low level. They just want good, reliable APIs that talk to the hardware.
The RP is actually a public facing project of a specific ARM manufacturer. Their ARM SoC (the one used in RP) is prehistoric, rather like using the 8088 in the days of the 80386/80486. And before you hit me with a 'cost' argument, the state-of-the-art Cortex chips form Allwinner, Rockchip and Mediatek are all incredibly cheap. Disgracefully, RP still uses a non-cortex part. a fully obsolete ARM v6 design (ALL modern tablets are ARM v7 ISA).
Sorry, everything should be Android these days. I have no love of Google (the owners of Google are actually NSA filth) but Android provides a base standard OS that can do for ARM what Windows95/NT/XP did for the PC. Development platforms that run various programming environments MUST be used on excellent, cheap, powerful, properly supported and properly optimised hardware and OS. Even those that loathe Microsoft adore Visual Studio (if not the latest Win8 or .Net crippled versions).
Ask yourself this question. Why, if the unique aspect of the RP is the 'hands on' hardware, do 99.99% of RP discussions revolve around pure software use- where any modern Android device does an infinitely better job? You do know you can hook up a proper keyboard and monitor to most cheapo Android tablets? You do know these cheapo tablets have 1GB or RAM, and a GPU subsystem that rivals PC graphics from the 7800GTX era of Nvidia? You do know that Android already has low level and high level programming environments that can unleash the full power of the device's hardware?
Raspbery Pi is obsolete ARM hardware at a far from remarkable price. For hardware freaks on a budget who need to put their own ARM card with break-out lines in a device of their own devising, it can't be beaten. For pure software use, it is worse than a very bad joke.
Since there's no actual even to report, we get a Slashdot story of "musing" by the founder.
At least label these as "paid content".
> I can’t think of any board that I could build at say $25 or even $35 that would be as good as Pi, let alone better.
Whole frickin Cortex-A8 Allwinter A13 tablet at $30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia50Fx0amE4
how about RK3066 android stick, Cortex-A9 Dual-core 1GB RAM, 8GB Flash at $35?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbAOnI1TR2k
>But it’s a push even at $45. $55 I could imagine that you’d start to get to the point where you can start to get better but it’s interesting that there’s nothing out there
>right now.
yeah, absolutelly nothing out there
no RK3188 Quad-core Cortex-A9 1GB RAM, 8GB Flash at $55
http://seabright.en.alibaba.com/product/918363394-209545308/2013_Cheapest_HDMI_rk3188_quad_core_android_4_2_tv_stick.html
oh, he meant nothing from Broadcom :)
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Plus much faster prototype boards available from seeedstudio.com in the 50-65 dollar range (IE dual core with 1 gig of ram.)
You could try Phratch...
https://code.google.com/p/phratch/
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