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Lots of clones are targetting "Pi people" One giveaway is "Pi" in the name. Other is having a similar now familiar PCB format. And there were/are a ton of the

by megous 5y ago

Lots of clones are targetting "Pi people" One giveaway is "Pi" in the name. Other is having a similar now familiar PCB format. And there were/are a ton of them: Lichee Pi, Bannana Pi, Orange Pi, FriendlyARM Nano Pi, Olimex stuff, Pine64, Libretech boards, Firefly boards, Radxa ROCK Pi, Hardkernel ODROIDs,... And many more. All either have Pi in name or have copied Rpi form factor. I think Rpi has the "first mover" advantage too, other than good marketing and very well funded foundation. Also early cooperation with large component suppliers surely helped a lot. One of the marketing tricks is that whenever someone talks about alternatives, someone will always come and state "oh, but community, and support is much better for Rpis" without knowing anything/very little about the other alternatives. All the diferences for normal use are abstracted away by OS. Anyone can blink their LEDs, drive I2C/SPI, use USB, etc. pretty much the same on all those boards. Only major difference is "how I'll boot this?" and "where I'll get kernel updates/is it mainline?" If that's figured out, it's possible to run any uptodate ARM distro on any of these boards. And that's how it always was.

justin66 5y ago
> Lots of clones are targetting "Pi people" > One giveaway is "Pi" in the name. Using the "Pi" in the name signals to hackers and makers that the board is intended to be similar in some way to the Raspberry Pi. (signals it to them in a pretty silly and superficial way, but I guess that's a matter of opinion) That is not the same as actually targeting Pi people, a purpose which would involve creating a product line, a Linux distribution and a foundation with a focus on K-12 education. Asus sorta-kinda tried to do some of this, in the most half-assed way imaginable, with the Tinker Board. I don't think anyone else has bothered. > I think Rpi has the "first mover" advantage too, other than good marketing and very well funded foundation. Also early cooperation with large component suppliers surely helped a lot. If you compare with Beagle you'll find that they had a very strong advantage in all these areas. In spite of the Beagle's early start, people liked the Pi and its mission more. I think that's fundamentally what you're not getting. > One of the marketing tricks is that whenever someone talks about alternatives, someone will always come and state "oh, but community, and support is much better for Rpis" without knowing anything/very little about the other alternatives. Is there a community for some other SBC that is similar in scope, mission, and accomplishments to the Raspberry Pi foundation? It's not completely crazy to think that something like that exists in China or something. (what you're describing isn't marketing or a trick) > All the diferences for normal use are abstracted away by OS. Anyone can blink their LEDs, drive I2C/SPI, use USB, etc. pretty much the same on all those boards. If "blink the LEDs" type tasks are what you want to tackle as a beginner, of course you're going to prefer the RPi. > Only major difference is "how I'll boot this?" and "where I'll get kernel updates/is it mainline?" If that's figured out, it's possible to run any uptodate ARM distro on any of these boards. And that's how it always was. If you're the sort of person who likes to figure that stuff out, you certainly do have the option of using other things. That stuff is boring to most people. People are voting with their feet.

by megous 5y ago

justin66 5y ago

> Lots of clones are targetting "Pi people" > One giveaway is "Pi" in the name. Using the "Pi" in the name signals to hackers and makers that the board is intended to be similar in some way to the Raspberry Pi. (signals it to them in a pretty silly and superficial way, but I guess that's a matter of opinion) That is not the same as actually targeting Pi people, a purpose which would involve creating a product line, a Linux distribution and a foundation with a focus on K-12 education. Asus sorta-kinda tried to do some of this, in the most half-assed way imaginable, with the Tinker Board. I don't think anyone else has bothered. > I think Rpi has the "first mover" advantage too, other than good marketing and very well funded foundation. Also early cooperation with large component suppliers surely helped a lot. If you compare with Beagle you'll find that they had a very strong advantage in all these areas. In spite of the Beagle's early start, people liked the Pi and its mission more. I think that's fundamentally what you're not getting. > One of the marketing tricks is that whenever someone talks about alternatives, someone will always come and state "oh, but community, and support is much better for Rpis" without knowing anything/very little about the other alternatives. Is there a community for some other SBC that is similar in scope, mission, and accomplishments to the Raspberry Pi foundation? It's not completely crazy to think that something like that exists in China or something. (what you're describing isn't marketing or a trick) > All the diferences for normal use are abstracted away by OS. Anyone can blink their LEDs, drive I2C/SPI, use USB, etc. pretty much the same on all those boards. If "blink the LEDs" type tasks are what you want to tackle as a beginner, of course you're going to prefer the RPi. > Only major difference is "how I'll boot this?" and "where I'll get kernel updates/is it mainline?" If that's figured out, it's possible to run any uptodate ARM distro on any of these boards. And that's how it always was. If you're the sort of person who likes to figure that stuff out, you certainly do have the option of using other things. That stuff is boring to most people. People are voting with their feet.