Raspberry PI

[Firedawg]

I was contacted by Newark/element14 to process a pre-order for the R-Pi to be shipped appx April 4th.  Well, I did not get in during the initial sales frenzy but at least I did not have to wait long to order.  For me the size of the device will lend it self to many small embedded projects.  The price certainly makes owning one a no brainer.  Time will tell how successful the device will be based on how developers embrace it and make it useful for learning.  But, for the rest of us hacks just another tool to make something happen. :biglaugh:

[Arkhan]

My school taught me VB.

After I made Pong in class, the teacher gave me an A and said do whatever, because I'd already passed the class.

It still a neat class, I just wish it wasn't VB.

There was alot of logic/problem solving, but the teacher was an actual programmer.  She knew C, BASIC, Fortran, and all the good stuff.

[commodorejohn]

I saw more interesting stuff in BASIC from Mr. Wizzard on TV and Compute! magazines. In the 6th grade we had to do some LOGO stuff and the teacher didn't like messing with the computers so she just took us out on the playground and made every kid a turtle and had us walk the programs out in the sand. Don't even need a computer for that kind of stuff. Anybody who ever played a board game or knitted a scarf has done more logic than what a school child will ever see in a classroom. Kids will learn more about logic in a math class than they'll ever get in a few stupid programming tricks lessons in computer lab.

That's a problem of bad curricula and bad tools, though, not a problem with the concept. I don't know how the Pi effort is going to work out, curriculum-wise, but I will say that while Python isn't my language of choice, it's certainly not LOGO or '80s ROM BASIC.

[Linde]

I dunno, it's a tiny little goonbox with crapass specs.  That's crippled in my book.

Well, that's in the eye of the beholder, and in the end it depends on what you are going to use it for. I'm sure it would have enough horsepower for you to troll amiga.org with it, for example.

Right.  However, I think there are better solutions.  Ignorant parents suck.  Especially since most parents suck at computers and screw them up (and then blame the kid who barely uses it)

I'm glad you are able to make legitimate points and back them up with hard data. I see that in your eyes both parents and children are stupid and ignorant, but in real life the situation is a bit more complex. Naturally, you don't want your 12 year old child to experiment freely with your computer. If he has his own computer, you probably don't want him to mess about too much with that either, because in the end you'll have to fix it if things **** up.

Please, lets drop the condescending HURHUR you dunno nothin' crap.  It's getting none of us anywhere.

If someone's talking out of his ass, making invalid assumptions about everything, I'll point it out. It's hard to approach you in any way that' not condescending because most everything you say makes you look like an angry 15 year old.

I use linux daily (Zenwalk and Fedora).  I've even got a frigging Minix install still.  Mono blows.  The good form of C# is all the M$ related nonsense.

Frankly, it's beyond me why anyone would like to do C#/.NET stuff in Linux, but maybe you could point out what particularly blows about Mono. It's not a 100% implementation of .NET, but it's no less than C# for you.

Plus this *is* all Linux stuff.  Linux is not really user friendly, especially to kids who generally have short attention spans and are impatient.

Totally distribution dependent. Tried Android? It's not like Fedora is black magic either.

I was under the impression these things came with goofy little dumbed down Linux OS's that aren't exactly full of all the features you'd want, out of box. I don't expect a little kid to be savvy enough to start adding things he needs/wants to one of these.  Nor do I expect most staff at a school.   I drew this conclusion from reading the wikipedia entry AND the RPi wiki.  It sounds like they've got Linux going on it, but it isn't full-blown.  As expected from some crap running off an SD card.

Before you start talking about full blown/not full blown, you need to set the definitions straight. The distribution for the RPi is full blown in the sense that you can compile and run software freely as you would any other distribution. It's NOT full blown in the sense that... well, in that you'll never acknowledge that it is, no matter what anyone says.

Oh, and on one hand you are whining about how Linux isn't user friendly, and on the other hand you are whining about the distribution being "dumbed down." Make up your mind. If you can't follow your own train of thought, maybe you should continue trolling some other day. Your arguments so far have been based on ambiguations, misunderstandings, fallacious conclusions and outright lies.

But, what you are saying then is, these can run the same full blown Fedora install that I have installed right here?  With all the fixins?

Get a big enough SD card and make a big enough swap file; I'm sure you could. The RPi distribution probably has a subset of the software you get out of the box with the official desktop PC distribution, but it is Fedora nonetheless.

and still, it's a fairly low powered machine.  I sure hope the thing is snappy.  I remember putting Fedora on a 1ghz 256mb machine, and even with XFCE, the thing was pretty damn sluggish.

We'll have to wait and see, I guess. Personally, I don't use desktop environments at all, and simple/friendly WMs like Openbox run happily without.

Everyone is approaching this from a seasoned developer standpoint.  Try putting yourself in a clueless little kids shoes.  These aren't the PROGRAMMING YOUR COMPUTER IN BASIC days where a happy little computer cartoon on the cover tells you all about how to PEEK and POKE and make pacman in a weekend.

This is a cluster****.  It's modern computing.

Generally speaking, 12 year olds are quick learners when given the right motivation. I understand that you don't think highly of children at all, but 12 year olds are close to the peak of being able to pick up new skills. Even if 90% won't have any use of it, the $35 price makes it more worth a shot than ever before.

[HenryCase]

Kids will learn more about logic in a math class than they'll ever get in a few stupid programming tricks lessons in computer lab.

You're wrong. What most kids learn from maths classes is how to repetitively apply rules about arithmetic manipulation, so that it's more about having a good memory than about thinking creatively. Programming seems much better placed to teach you how to think for yourself to solve problems. Besides, programming is basically 'applied mathematics' in many ways, especially when you get past the initial stages. Mathematics is an important subject, but to state computer programming offers little to the kids that learn it conveys a hefty level of ignorance.

@all that are dissing the Raspberry Pi
How do you propose giving each schoolkid their own cheap computer they can transport between school and home?

[koaftder]

You're wrong. What most kids learn from maths classes is how to repetitively apply rules about arithmetic manipulation, so that it's more about having a good memory than about thinking creatively.

That's bs. You obviously have no idea what's going on k-12 math classes. (that covers a *lot* of territory)

Programming seems much better placed to teach you how to think for yourself to solve problems.

Only if you can wrap your mind around it. Most people can't, mainly due to laziness and lack of interest. Even most people who call themselves programmers are woefully incompetent and fail at solving basic problems.

Besides, programming is basically 'applied mathematics' in many ways

I agree.
 

especially when you get past the initial stages.

That takes genuine interest, perseverance and lots of time, something most people lack.

Mathematics is an important subject, but to state computer programming offers little to the kids that learn it conveys a hefty level of ignorance.

Given that programming was dumped on little kids in the 80's and early 90's and didn't yield useful results, I think it's ignorant to think it would a second time around. Programming classes make sense for high school electives, but anything more is just a waste of time. That's why elementary and middle schools don't really bother with it anymore.

[commodorejohn]

Buhh, "expected to ship April 3..." Oh well, as long as it gets here...

[HenryCase]

That's bs. You obviously have no idea what's going on k-12 math classes. (that covers a *lot* of territory)

Okay, go on then, enlighten me, what are students expected to learn in K-12 mathematics classes?

Given that programming was dumped on little kids in the 80's and early 90's and didn't yield useful results, I think it's ignorant to think it would a second time around. Programming classes make sense for high school electives, but anything more is just a waste of time. That's why elementary and middle schools don't really bother with it anymore.

Back then, computer use was not as pervasive a part of our culture as it is today, computer skills were vaguely understood to be important, but the reasons why were poorly understood.

Nowadays, computing is everywhere, many more people interact with computers on a daily basis, and there's a stronger understanding that programming skills are useful in a wide range of jobs.

To summarise; whilst before there were good intentions without much insight on how best to capitalise on these intentions, nowadays we have good intentions plus a drive to improve computer literacy beyond the state it's at today. That's why it's more likely to work this time.

[takemehomegrandma]

Although this is more expensive by $100 or so, I don't see why it didn't sell that well to the Geeks: https://www.genesi-usa.com/store/details/11

Well, not enough memory (only 512MB).
A slow A8 processor.

What else don't you understand?

:lol:

Memory:
OK, much memory is pleasant to have, but in these applications it's a trade-off with cost, and 512MB memory is actually *enough* for most cases (often more than enough), at least I haven't run into any problems or disturbing slowdowns due to this.

And the Raspberry has *half* of this (and on "Model B" (which everyone will be buying) half of that is reserved for the GPU), so your point is rather strange...

Processor:
The Raspberry's BCM2835:
- is ARM11, in other words ARMv6, which due to its age is no longer supported by several popular versions of Linux, including Ubuntu.
- Level 2 Cache is 128 KB, used primarily by the GPU, *not* the CPU
- Doesn't have Hardware Floating Point? (Note the question mark: This is feature is optional in ARM11, and AFAICT only cores with a trailing "-S" have this feature, like "ARM1176JZF-S". The BCM2835 appears to be ARM1176JZF)
- It's only 1.25 DMIPS/MHz
- It's only clocked at 700MHz.

The "slow" (as you put it) A8/i.MX51 in the Efika MX:
- is ARMv7 (what everyone uses today, including Apple, Android and the Linux distros)
- Has 256KB L2 cache
- Has NEON SIMD (think Altivec, but not quite as powerful)
- Has Hardware Floating Point (with hardfloat support implemented in Linux through Linaro, much thanks to Genesi)
- 2.0 DMIPS/MHz
- is clocked at 800MHz.

General differencies:
The Efika MX:
- Has WiFI (and also Ethernet of course)
- Has a 8GB Internal SSD, with a pretty decent performance actually
- Audio jacks for headset (yes, including audio *IN*)
- Has a built-in speaker
- Comes built in to a real case

The Raspberry:
- Nope!

While I actually understands that a price tag at a quarter of the Efika MX would seem cool at a first glance, it's also worth noting that the Raspberry only reaches a quarter to the Efika's level of specification and functionality. In fact, I think this could be too limited to actually be useful for real. The final version of this could possibly be sold as a naked PCB at a similar price (and it would offer a lot more than the Raspberry). But the question is - Why?

[minator]

Sadly the UK education system is becoming very workplace orientated. Too much so IMHO.

The entire Raspberry Pi project was conceived because the UK education system is *not* workplace orientated.

The industry wants developers while schools are teaching them about Powerpoint and Word.  Even Microsoft don't want them to do that!

[minator]

Processor:
The Raspberry's BCM2835:
- is ARM11, in other words ARMv6, which due to its age is no longer supported by several popular versions of Linux, including Ubuntu.

Linux supports a whole range of ARM cores.

- Doesn't have Hardware Floating Point? (Note the question mark: This is feature is optional in ARM11, and AFAICT only cores with a trailing "-S" have this feature, like "ARM1176JZF-S". The BCM2835 appears to be ARM1176JZF)

It's got an ARM11JZF-S
The "F" indicates it has hardware floating point.

While I actually understands that a price tag at a quarter of the Efika MX would seem cool at a first glance, it's also worth noting that the Raspberry only reaches a quarter to the Efika's level of specification and functionality. In fact, I think this could be too limited to actually be useful for real. The final version of this could possibly be sold as a naked PCB at a similar price (and it would offer a lot more than the Raspberry). But the question is - Why?

They're designed to be so cheap you can almost give them away.  The other parts you need you'll already have so they in effect cost nothing.  It's also done by a charity so they're not intended to make any significant profits.

If you want to equip 100 kids with these boards it's surprisingly cheap.  There's quite a difference if you want to do that with the Efika MX.

[Tripitaka]

The entire Raspberry Pi project was conceived because the UK education system is *not* workplace orientated.

The industry wants developers while schools are teaching them about Powerpoint and Word.  Even Microsoft don't want them to do that!

That's a fair point and I agree but to clarify, that was not what I was referring to regarding the UK education system.

My comment was on the general approach of the UK education system based on the fact that my own kids (twins, now 13) are taking their options. It's not a lesson for lesson based approach, they have to pick paths, basically career paths. The qualifications a lot of kids are working towards now in the UK are NVQ, National Vocational Qualifications. I think it's too much direction at too young an age, how many people know what they want to do for a career at 13?

[gazgod]

Just managed to pre-order a Pi from Farnells.

I really don't understand all the negativity in this thread to something that can only be seen in a positive light, its the first bit of technology that I've been eagerly awaiting for a long time.

[Tripitaka]

Just managed to pre-order a Pi from Farnells.

I really don't understand all the negativity in this thread to something that can only be seen in a positive light, its the first bit of technology that I've been eagerly awaiting for a long time.

Considering that we all have mice, keyboards and monitors anyway, at the price of less than the average console game I think they are hard to resist. If someone buys and tries, then decides it's not for them the demand will mean they recoup most of the cash anyway. I hope you have lots of fun with it.

[TheBilgeRat]

Bunch of cool stuff about Efika

I want one of those as well! But it is over a hundred dollars, and then if you take everyone's assumption about cost of kbd/mouse/monitor, that thing costs 1200 dollars!!!!111111oneoneone :insane:

But serious.  The efika IS cool.  Still, what, 2800 dollars cheaper than other homebrew projects we could mention.  BUT, for the cost of an efika, you could have a pretty sweet morphOS box, if you could afford the keyboard, mouse and monitor for it...

[dammy]

BUT, for the cost of an efika, you could have a pretty sweet morphOS box, if you could afford the keyboard, mouse and monitor for it...

What, an eMac?