<p>A supported common platform is one reason. Availability (once they start mass producing them) and price are others. For my project at least (same thing with RaspBMC) , it would be super easy to host the already built/setup OS, download it and dd to an SD card. </p>
<p>Also, all hacking that's done on them benefits education (the Raspberry Pi's main goal) in two ways. One, so the capabilities of the device can be explored/tutorialized (yes, that's a word I just made up) and second that once they are produced for schools, there will already be tons of cool projects for kids to get excited for. </p>
<p>My two cents. </p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 29, 2012 11:11 PM, "Kyle" <<a href="mailto:dontwantspam1@earthlink.net" target="_blank">dontwantspam1@earthlink.net</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
What I wonder is why there's so much hype for this when there are
other cheap low-power ARM devices being thrown out all the time.
There are plenty of cell phones and other devices that'll run Debian
just fine - old cell phones, old e-book readers, etc. - that suit
the purposes of a number of the members' use cases. Even broken
devices. Who needs a working EDGE modem - just about anything with
WiFi fits the bill on a bunch of the use cases, and any device that
has software control of USB host mode (most ARM devices I've
encountered) solve the external storage cases. HDMI requires a
phone or other device with an HDMI port (without an external
graphics card on USB host mode or something similar). Some of the
devices (particularly e-readers) do not have media decoding chips,
but I don't see a need for that, nor even seeing it being used due
to unlikeliness of compiler compatibility in a case like an Asterisk
server. That may be inaccurate, but it still satisfies a lot of use
cases. I mean, I regularly carry around two ARM devices that run
Debian (and were not designed to) and one that runs Ubuntu (again,
not designed for it). It's not particularly difficult. There are
tools available to build chroot images that often times you can run
under Android with minimal effort, giving you a familiar userland
which you can apt-get install packages to.<br>
<br>
Don't get me wrong - the Raspberry Pi is a cool device - but I guess
my point is that even without getting one, the possibilities and
wants I've seen expressed are already achievable! Go build cool
things!<br>
<br>
- Kyle<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 02/29/2012 08:57 AM, Clay Ashby wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">I'm looking forward to playing with this. For the
purpose of conversation; what's everyone planning to do with
theirs? Maybe this has already been discussed and I missed it...
<div><br>
</div>
<div>My first thought was getting it to access internet through my
Android phone. It might be fun to try and cluster a few of them
- pointless, but fun.<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 8:21 AM,
Brandon White <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rbwhite18@gmail.com" target="_blank">rbwhite18@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Same situation here... lame...<br>
<div>
<div><br>
<br>
On Feb 29, 2012, at 7:18 AM, megadave wrote:<br>
<br>
> Actually R-Pi's site was fine.<br>
><br>
> It was their 'partner sites' (the ones that were
supposed to be<br>
> actually taking orders) that fell over hard.<br>
><br>
> FWIW, I was actually on at the time (by plan)
trying to get in and<br>
> order.. I tried for half an hour before giving up
and going to bed. It<br>
> appears that all either of their partner sites are
now offering is<br>
> "register an interest".<br>
><br>
> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 05:42, Mike Williams <<a href="mailto:knightperson@zuzax.com" target="_blank">knightperson@zuzax.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
>> Official launch was a few hours ago (6am GMT),
and the demand was high<br>
>> enough to cripple their site. Shall we start a
betting pool on how long it<br>
>> will take before somebody at GRLUG has one in
hand on this side of the<br>
>> ocean?<br>
>><br>
>> --<br>
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</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div>-Clay</div>
<div><a href="http://gnomecc.com" target="_blank">http://gnomecc.com</a></div>
"technologically promiscuous"<br>
<br>
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