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Raspberry Pi Opens First High Street Store in Cambridge

18 points by timthorn 8y ago

dimensi0nal 8y ago
How is the Raspberry Pi still relevant? There are better/faster/cheaper/more open SBCs.
- johnnyRose 8y ago
  Do you mean better, faster, _and_ cheaper in a single device? Honestly curious, what do you recommend over Raspberry Pi?
  - rocky1138 8y ago
    I've heard the Rock Pi4[0] is very good. [0] https://shop.allnetchina.cn/ https://shop.allnetchina.cn/
- timthorn 8y ago
  It has the ecosystem. Not just the technical side, but it has mindshare in education. There will be more people who know what a Raspberry Pi is than an SBC.
- wyattpeak 8y ago
  Because they have a high street store? I'm being flippant, but I think the point is important. What Raspberry Pi really brought to the table was making hardware hacking feel accessible. The sorts of people they're appealing to aren't looking for the fastest or best system, they're looking for something that feels easy and straightforward. They're cheap enough that I doubt price is a major consideration, and openness is almost a non-consideration among the populace at large.
- gjsman-1000 8y ago
  Community + Support + Ecosystem + Everyone else has bad GPU drivers. Almost everyone else has GPU drivers which only work in Android and don't support Linux desktop. Unaccelerated Linux desktop is no fun.
- antt 8y ago
  Amazing marketing. Somehow they have managed to convince people they are open source (they aren't) that they are a good architecture (they aren't) and they are good to teach children about hardware on (they aren't).
  - GordonS 8y ago
    What do you recommended as an alternative? Does it stack up on price, features and ease of development?
- wvenable 8y ago
  Are there cheaper/more open SBCs that actually work? There are cheaper and faster but most have terrible software support.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
rocky1138 8y ago
I was hoping for a few more pictures of what the store looks like.
- Zenst 8y ago
  Worry no more https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/raspberry-pi-official-retail-store/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/raspberry-pi-official-reta...
rocky1138 8y ago
I've always felt that the we've never actually seen anything really use the Raspberry Pi to its fullest because of closed-source graphics drivers and closed-source graphics schematics. Is this realistic?
- gjsman-1000 8y ago
  Not really. To be fair, all modern GPUs are closed-source and the Raspberry Pi actually has the only mobile GPU with some public documentation. Sure, there are open-source implementations of Mali and other GPUs, but they just don't work well. Unlike many knockoff boards, you can build the proprietary blob into your code and get great performance (see Kodi or VLC, which can play 1080p30 and has a very smooth UI on the Pi). As for closed source schematics, it doesn't really matter because there is no way to purchase the processor powering the Pi yourself. Some clone manufacturer tried to buy the BCM2835 in like 2014, but Broadcom had a 100,000 order minimum, and so the clone manufacturer just couldn't afford it. So, schematics aren't really useful. Finally, a HUGE reason why the graphics software is closed-source inside the GPU is legal issues. The GPU contains dedicated video decode/encode blocks which have patents which require licensing. RPi gets around this by keeping the GPU closed source and selling MP2/VC1 decode licenses. If the Raspberry Pi foundation distributed open-source GPU software which could use those decoding blocks, they would be underwater with lawsuits from multiple patent bodies.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- stefan_ 8y ago
  The Raspberry Pis have a VC4 GPU that has a fully upstreamed Linux kernel driver and a fully upstreamed Mesa userland graphics driver. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/drivers/gpu/drm/vc4 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/drivers/gpu/dr... https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/tree/master/src/gallium/drivers/vc4 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/tree/master/src/gal... This isn't some toy reverse engineered implementation; the principal author is Eric Anholt who is employed by Broadcom for pretty much building this and other open-source drivers. If you are still using the closed driver dump, it's because you haven't been paying attention.
Deimorz 8y ago
Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104112
mishurov 8y ago
Based and redpilled.

18 points by timthorn 8y ago

dimensi0nal 8y ago

How is the Raspberry Pi still relevant? There are better/faster/cheaper/more open SBCs.

johnnyRose 8y ago
Do you mean better, faster, _and_ cheaper in a single device? Honestly curious, what do you recommend over Raspberry Pi?
- rocky1138 8y ago
  I've heard the Rock Pi4[0] is very good. [0] https://shop.allnetchina.cn/ https://shop.allnetchina.cn/
timthorn 8y ago
It has the ecosystem. Not just the technical side, but it has mindshare in education. There will be more people who know what a Raspberry Pi is than an SBC.
wyattpeak 8y ago
Because they have a high street store? I'm being flippant, but I think the point is important. What Raspberry Pi really brought to the table was making hardware hacking feel accessible. The sorts of people they're appealing to aren't looking for the fastest or best system, they're looking for something that feels easy and straightforward. They're cheap enough that I doubt price is a major consideration, and openness is almost a non-consideration among the populace at large.
gjsman-1000 8y ago
Community + Support + Ecosystem + Everyone else has bad GPU drivers. Almost everyone else has GPU drivers which only work in Android and don't support Linux desktop. Unaccelerated Linux desktop is no fun.
antt 8y ago
Amazing marketing. Somehow they have managed to convince people they are open source (they aren't) that they are a good architecture (they aren't) and they are good to teach children about hardware on (they aren't).
- GordonS 8y ago
  What do you recommended as an alternative? Does it stack up on price, features and ease of development?
wvenable 8y ago
Are there cheaper/more open SBCs that actually work? There are cheaper and faster but most have terrible software support.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

rocky1138 8y ago

I was hoping for a few more pictures of what the store looks like.

Zenst 8y ago
Worry no more https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/raspberry-pi-official-retail-store/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/raspberry-pi-official-reta...

rocky1138 8y ago

I've always felt that the we've never actually seen anything really use the Raspberry Pi to its fullest because of closed-source graphics drivers and closed-source graphics schematics. Is this realistic?

gjsman-1000 8y ago
Not really. To be fair, all modern GPUs are closed-source and the Raspberry Pi actually has the only mobile GPU with some public documentation. Sure, there are open-source implementations of Mali and other GPUs, but they just don't work well. Unlike many knockoff boards, you can build the proprietary blob into your code and get great performance (see Kodi or VLC, which can play 1080p30 and has a very smooth UI on the Pi). As for closed source schematics, it doesn't really matter because there is no way to purchase the processor powering the Pi yourself. Some clone manufacturer tried to buy the BCM2835 in like 2014, but Broadcom had a 100,000 order minimum, and so the clone manufacturer just couldn't afford it. So, schematics aren't really useful. Finally, a HUGE reason why the graphics software is closed-source inside the GPU is legal issues. The GPU contains dedicated video decode/encode blocks which have patents which require licensing. RPi gets around this by keeping the GPU closed source and selling MP2/VC1 decode licenses. If the Raspberry Pi foundation distributed open-source GPU software which could use those decoding blocks, they would be underwater with lawsuits from multiple patent bodies.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
stefan_ 8y ago
The Raspberry Pis have a VC4 GPU that has a fully upstreamed Linux kernel driver and a fully upstreamed Mesa userland graphics driver. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/drivers/gpu/drm/vc4 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/drivers/gpu/dr... https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/tree/master/src/gallium/drivers/vc4 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/tree/master/src/gal... This isn't some toy reverse engineered implementation; the principal author is Eric Anholt who is employed by Broadcom for pretty much building this and other open-source drivers. If you are still using the closed driver dump, it's because you haven't been paying attention.

Deimorz 8y ago

Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104112

mishurov 8y ago

Based and redpilled.