[GRLUG] Raspberry Pi launched!

[Kyle]

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.

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!

- Kyle



On 02/29/2012 08:57 AM, Clay Ashby wrote:
> 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...
>
> 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.
>
> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 8:21 AM, Brandon White <rbwhite18 at gmail.com 
> <mailto:rbwhite18 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Same situation here... lame...
>
>
>     On Feb 29, 2012, at 7:18 AM, megadave wrote:
>
>     > Actually R-Pi's site was fine.
>     >
>     > It was their 'partner sites' (the ones that were supposed to be
>     > actually taking orders) that fell over hard.
>     >
>     > FWIW, I was actually on at the time (by plan) trying to get in and
>     > order.. I tried for half an hour before giving up and going to
>     bed. It
>     > appears that all either of their partner sites are now offering is
>     > "register an interest".
>     >
>     > On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 05:42, Mike Williams
>     <knightperson at zuzax.com <mailto:knightperson at zuzax.com>> wrote:
>     >> Official launch was a few hours ago (6am GMT), and the demand
>     was high
>     >> enough to cripple their site. Shall we start a betting pool on
>     how long it
>     >> will take before somebody at GRLUG has one in hand on this side
>     of the
>     >> ocean?
>     >>
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> http://gnomecc.com
> "technologically promiscuous"
>
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