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Raspberry Pi Hits the 2 Million Mark

Posted by timothy on from the chicken-in-every-pot dept.

The Raspberry Pi project that we've been fans of for quite a while now has hit a new milestone: Today, they announced that as of the last week in October, the project has sold more than two million boards. Raspberry Pi is anything but alone in the tiny, hackable computer world (all kinds of other options, from Arduino to the x86-based Minnowboard, are out there, and all have their selling points), but the low price, open-source emphasis, and focus on education have all helped the Pi catch on. If yours is one of these 2 million, what are you using it for? (And if you favor some other small system for your own experiments, what factors matter?)

17 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Sorry, still not getting one. by Ihlosi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ARMv6 is outdated, ARMv7 is the way to go. And I'd rather have a not-so-beefy GPU than one that takes binary firmware blobs.

    1. Re:Sorry, still not getting one. by DigitAl56K · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Many people won't care what the CPU is. I thought about getting one and I know I don't care. It's cheap and flexible, has decent enough interfaces, has a huge community, and many people who will be coding on it will be writing Python anyway. I had a problem in mind and needed a small programmable device to solve it. I think many people will approach the pi this way rather than from a spec sheet perspective. I.e. "what can I do with this" vs. "what's it made from".

    2. Re:Sorry, still not getting one. by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ARMv6 is outdated, ARMv7 is the way to go.

      People do still cool stuff with the 6502 even if it's "outdated". ARMv6 is not outdated, it's a stable platform.

    3. Re:Sorry, still not getting one. by maevius · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You. Still. Don't. Get IT!

      It is not about the power! You have a cheap ass device that has a massive community that have solved almost all the bugs in the thing so any problem you have is a google search away. The foundation pays for ports of software to it. When you buy a new peripheral you can find quickly if it works with the pi and how to make it work. You can find lots of different enclosures and almost any other wacky thing you can think about.

      Also...All modern GPU have binary blobs. On pcs, on phones, on tablets, on embedded. Get over it.

    4. Re: Sorry, still not getting one. by DigitAl56K · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No. 2M people bought a pi. Apparently it was good enough for them.

    5. Re:Sorry, still not getting one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      All modern GPU have binary blobs. On pcs, on phones, on tablets, on embedded. Get over it.

      I will

      never

      "get over" my desire for freedom, for liberty, and for complete documentation.

      I'm never going to pay for closed proprietary non-documented walled-garden shit. And even more importantly, I'm never going to spend my valuable time to reverse engineer it, or develop anything for it, either.

    6. Re:Sorry, still not getting one. by maevius · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The same way you are not paying for your TV, car, furniture, washing machine? I am pretty sure that you don't drink coca-cola because they don't release the recipe.

      I don't mind open source purists, but the only purist is Stallman (and he is a fucking psycho). All the rest - you included of course - are lame hypocrites.

      I undestand the aversion from locked platforms with the sole purpose of vendor lock-in or for example making money for stuff I could fix myself - see apple, oracle, microsoft products. But the development of the videocore never had that intent and this makes you an absolutist hypocrite.

      Cheers

    7. Re:Sorry, still not getting one. by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you are using this for very high end mathmatical simulations and CAD software then you are doing it wrong. Seriously that is not what these units are for.

      A used PC from 10 years ago can be had which and do that well like an AthlonXP or a VM in vmware or virtualbox on your host computer if you want to tinker and develop software for unix and have it integrate with your Windows host.

      For hobbiest work it is fine as double precision is fine in emulation and get a real pc if you need something with a kick

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    8. Re: Sorry, still not getting one. by ArbitraryName · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Depends on what you mean by cheap. A RPi draws about 1 watt. A PC will easily run 80-90 watts or more.

  2. Cue the hate. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For some reason the RPi always seem to get so much bitterness here. Apparently there are a lot of self-described nerds on a tech website for nerds who cannot imagine the use of a very small, cheap, low power hackable computer with moderate computing power.

    I find this very strange.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  3. Re:Purchased 4 so far by mrclisdue · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Running xbmc (openelec) on a total of 31, so far. I use 7 here at home, and the rest I've acquired for friends and relatives. I've totally cut the cable, I have moderately high-speed internet and I get a 10 or so tv channels ota. Basically, $70/mo for internet, and all my television (including all live sports (I *do* pay $150/yr for nhl gamecenter, archived games, etc)), music, movies, looked after. Most of the others who have acquired the pis from me have cut the cable, too...

  4. So, 2 million and 1 will come from somewhere else by DavidClarkeHR · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ARMv6 is outdated, ARMv7 is the way to go. And I'd rather have a not-so-beefy GPU than one that takes binary firmware blobs.

    Of course, if the tech doesn't fit, you must ... not purchase it. Or something like that

    On the other hand, 2 million purchases seem to think that forking over $40 for a board isn't a TERRIBLE idea.

    --
    - Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
  5. Re:Raspberry PI USB Power Issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That was addressed long time ago, get decent power supply with spare amperage.

  6. Re:Not Free (As In Freedom) by hamster_nz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow! Said like a true Open Source fundamentalist. I'm hoping you wrote that on an OpenRISC based computer, not a PC with a closed source CPU, closed source BIOS, closed source chipset, closed source video adapter... :-)

    I like my hardware Open, however I don't mind shelling out $35 for board to do stuff with. Download and write an image SD card, plug it in.

    Up and running in 15 minutes, with no 'wasted' time or money..

  7. Re:Which device for tamper resistant android w/ to by couchslug · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Any, but I'd pot the thing in epoxy inside a metal shell and it wouldn't be user-accessible other than a simple non-root interface to change price per gallon and any other required functions.

    If it breaks, throw it away and replace it. If faults are found in the future, ship a later version and swap 'em out.

    --
    "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
  8. Agree with Free as in Libre. But I got an RP... by Dystopian+Rebel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We're in the golden age for software development. I prefer an "open" solution like the Beagleboard but I received an R.Pi v2 for free and have made it part of my low-power dev environment. I'll describe this environment for the amusement of ye 'dotters.

    I installed a $10 hardware clock in the R.Pi and I power the it with a spare power cord from an Amazon Kindle.

    I run Raspbian (Debian) with Icewm DE. I use the R.Pi for coding (Java, C++, Perl, Go) and I push Mercurial updates to a code repo on a Sheevaplug running Debian Wheezy. The Sheevaplug's power supply had failed (typical problem, melted capacitors) but I wired the mainboard to an AC adaptor from a USB hub.

    I've overclocked the R.Pi to 900MHz. This isn't enough CPU to browse the Internet directly from the R.Pi with Iceweasel/Firefox, but Midori and NetSurf work well enough. On a Pogoplug V2 (running Debian, you see the pattern here), I have lighttpd and a Perl program that fetches and summarises RSS feeds for me. I can view the RSS summary from the R.Pi using NetSurf or Midori. (Dillo doesn't do tables well.)

    When I need to do Web research that requires Flash or special plug-ins, I use rdesktop to connect to a VM instance of Firefox (M-Windows XP or Debian) installed on an AMD box running VMware ESXi server. ESXi server is free.

    I have all this running with an APC battery back-up. The APC unit can run for some time with only the ARM kit to power. I have another APC UPS feeding my modem, router, and assorted switches.

    It's a versatile dev environment and it didn't cost much. None of it would be possible without Linux. I'll say it again: this is a golden age for software developers.

    --
    Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
  9. Re:So, 2 million and 1 will come from somewhere el by Ihlosi · · Score: 2, Insightful
    On the other hand, 2 million purchases seem to think that forking over $40 for a board isn't a TERRIBLE idea.

    It's just another example of a well-marketed product beating technically superior products, which appears to happen 99.9% of the time.