Raspberry Pi - $35 Linux computer

daz · 4 Sep 2011 at 17:59

I've been following the http://www.raspberrypi.org/ progress over the last few months and it looks like it's going to be a fantastic product. An ARM based linux computer in a credit card sized form factor, with decent I/O options.

Now whilst this is intended to have educational applications (they want it so they can kit out classes for ~$1000) I think I'll be using it to replace an ageing P3 based home server.

BigglesPiP · 4 Sep 2011 at 19:19

It's tempting to get one to replace my somewhat hungry hacked Fonera as the server that gets left on in the day while I'm at work.

PermaBanned · 4 Sep 2011 at 19:42

Interesting... any word on it being available in the UK? Will be nice to have some way of running the same software on both x86 and ARM, so we can see how far it's come.

matja · 4 Sep 2011 at 19:53

PermaBanned said:
Interesting... any word on it being available in the UK? Will be nice to have some way of running the same software on both x86 and ARM, so we can see how far it's come.

It's being developed at Broadcom in Cambridge, UK - so, yes; definitely

daz · 4 Sep 2011 at 19:59

Should be available in November I think they're aiming for. Some of the videos and screenshots they have of the hardware running Ubuntu and Quake 3 are really impressive.

VeNT · 4 Sep 2011 at 20:42

sounds nice, I've seen some shots and read some articles,
it looks like it will be lots (2/3x) more than they hope for when it first comes out

quackers · 4 Sep 2011 at 21:50

It looks very nice, I can see myself buying one if the price stays at 25-30 pound here in the uk. I'll be honest, I'm not 100% what I'd actually use it for, home nas/media server perhaps?

richb93 · 4 Sep 2011 at 22:22

Saw this a while ago and have been following it. Looks amazing. The Quake 3 @ 1080p demo was impressive considering it pulls less than 1W @ full load! IIRC the GPU can process 1GPixels/sec :eek:

It also does hardware video decoding so XBMC would be very cool on it :cool:

triggerthat · 4 Sep 2011 at 22:35

720p?

craptakular · 4 Sep 2011 at 22:53

I'll get one at £30 ish... dumb question, how would you plug hdd into it?

daz · 4 Sep 2011 at 22:56

Oxy said:
I'll get one at £30 ish... dumb question, how would you plug hdd into it?

It boots and runs your main storage from an SD, if you need to add more storage you'd just use a portable USB drive.

JonJ678 · 4 Sep 2011 at 23:15

10/100 ethernet and a hdmi port are about all you need for a htpc. Network attached storage somewhere else, and this as a tiny board screwed into the back of the TV. Hard not to buy one really.

richb93 · 4 Sep 2011 at 23:38

triggerthat said:
720p?

1080p

Simian · 5 Sep 2011 at 09:33

Just joined the Mailing list and twitter feeds for this!!.. wouldn't mind one!!

and £30 odd quid!!.. can't go wrong!!

craptakular · 5 Sep 2011 at 10:24

What distribution will it run? Can it handle a keyboard and mouse? Can it run gnome 3?

I could then connect to the gui over lan and it would run fine?

Could it run Debain?

JHeaton · 5 Sep 2011 at 10:44

Oxy said:
What distribution will it run? Can it handle a keyboard and mouse? Can it run gnome 3?

I could then connect to the gui over lan and it would run fine?

Could it run Debain?

I think they plan on shipping it with Ubuntu's ARM variant. If Debian has an ARM port, then sure thing. I'm hoping to get one running Arch and just leave it on permanently.

Beepcake · 5 Sep 2011 at 13:59

It runs (or is currently running) Debian (standard kernel).

"It doesn’t need a proprietary kernel. If you read the FAQ more carefully, you’ll see that it runs with a vanilla Debian install. The other distros are also working with us; Ubuntu have decided not to participate because of the ARM issue, but everyone else has boards or has boards on the way to them, and will be supporting them."

Judgeneo · 5 Sep 2011 at 14:07

Slightly more power, and a way to connect hard drives and this would make an ideal file server.
I hope this project takes of, getting more kids into hardware and programming is just what we need in this country.

BigglesPiP · 5 Sep 2011 at 17:48

Beepcake said:
It runs (or is currently running) Debian (standard kernel).

"It doesn’t need a proprietary kernel. If you read the FAQ more carefully, you’ll see that it runs with a vanilla Debian install. The other distros are also working with us; Ubuntu have decided not to participate because of the ARM issue, but everyone else has boards or has boards on the way to them, and will be supporting them."

What ARM issue is this? I thought Ubuntu were aggressively perusing an ARM arch at the moment. They have a very swanky build farm: http://hackaday.com/2011/06/12/how-canonical-automates-linux-package-compilation/

PermaBanned · 5 Sep 2011 at 18:03

Speaking of Arch, there is a project that's managed to port it to various existing platforms, i wonder if any of them would be compatible with this...

http://archlinuxarm.org/

Incidentally, i couldn't actually find any information on the SOC they're using - googling it just took me back to their page :rolleyes: