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Raspberry Pi Hits the 2 Million Mark
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?)
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.
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".
ARMv6 is outdated, ARMv7 is the way to go.
People do still cool stuff with the 6502 even if it's "outdated". ARMv6 is not outdated, it's a stable platform.
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.
No. 2M people bought a pi. Apparently it was good enough for them.
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..
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.