4 ms·

The Raspi and Apple's ARM chips may be the ones that get the most coverage, but as others have pointed out, the groundwork for this has been laid much earlier:

by rob74 5y ago

The Raspi and Apple's ARM chips may be the ones that get the most coverage, but as others have pointed out, the groundwork for this has been laid much earlier: even the first Android phones and iPhones back in 2007 already used ARM-based SoCs and had Linux kernel support from day one, and the support only grew from there. The initial Raspi could only be sold at that low price because it used a mass-produced ARM SoC. So the only thing that is new is that ARM architecture is finally starting to "spill over" into the notebook/desktop and server market and preparing to eat Intel's (and AMD's) cake. But the wide-scale adoption of the architecture already has a long history, so presenting Raspi and Apple M1 as "pioneers of ARM introduction" is a bit misleading (Apple was a pioneer, but already back in 2007).

bayindirh 5y ago
From the hardware perspective you're certainly right, but while iPhone and Android had made the initial groundbreaking in the kernel(s) and userland(s), Raspberry Pi arguably brought it to "touch distance" for the layman. Before that there were already ARM servers too, but they're few and far between. So I was trying to say that, Raspberry Pi and Apple M1 made ARM "touchable" with standard development tools and utilities for the normal people out there. So, this interaction accelerated the acceptance and software porting and grown the ecosystem faster.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  From the hardware perspective you're certainly right, but while iPhone and Android had made the initial groundbreaking in the kernel(s) and userland(s), Raspberry Pi arguably brought it to "touch distance" for the layman. Everyone already had an iPhone or Android, how was it not touch distance for the layman?
  - bayindirh 5y ago
    Because to be able to interact with the OS and the system itself, you either had to Root your Android phone or Jailbreak your iPhone. OTOH, you can get a pi, add peripherals (or just network), and you have a system to be hacked and tinkered on. This is what I meant by touch distance.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      Neither was very hard, Android came with root in developer tools at first, has very easy root, and you could always just chroot if that was too hard. Jailbreaking was so easy someone like Justin Beiber did it. https://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/07/29/justin-bieber-jailbroken-iphone/ https://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/07/29/justin-bieber-jailb... Saurik and the original jailbreakers did all the heavy lifting, APT, SSH, and the usual CLI tools were ported so they could enjoy their handheld Unix computers. Pi was an image on a microSD, some computer interfaces, it was very slow, burned out the microSD card, and was discouraging for me to use when I had a much better computer, the phones were easy to invest effort in, if I had a way crappy computer I wouldn't do too much with it, most people throw PiHole and never touch it again.
      - bayindirh 5y ago
        > Neither was very hard, Android came with root in developer tools at first, has very easy root, and you could always just chroot if that was too hard. Been there, done that. Doesn't matter. Tinkering with a critical life infrastructure device vs, tinkering with a device made for tinkering is different. Way different. > Jailbreaking was so easy someone like Justin Beiber did it Again, doesn't matter because of the reasons I've said earlier. I'm using both platforms for a decade, and won't do them to my primary devices either. Because these devices are handling a lot of stuff for me, tinkering with them is not an option. > Pi was an image on a microSD, some computer interfaces, it was very slow, burned out the microSD card, and was discouraging for me to use when I had a much better computer, the phones were easy to invest effort in, if I had a way crappy computer I wouldn't do too much with it, most people throw PiHole and never touch it again. Actually, with a semi-decent SD card, burning one out with a Raspberry Pi is almost impossible. If you're worried about that, you can add a ZRAM, move swap and some folders to it (as Raspbian does), and sync during reboots, or periodically. If you're downloading world on it, a USB drive can alleviate the worry too. On the slowness side, a first generation Raspberry Pi has a comparable performance to a Pentium II - 266MHz system, with similar performance to GPUs of that era. Considering the things I've done (live webcasting for example) with a P2 at that time, A Raspberry Pi is a powerhouse for its size. You may have a much better computer with way higher specs, but you're missing the point. A Pi is a literally unbrickable and forgettable Linux PC with decent performance and no noise for many tasks many people do. I'm running an home infrastructure on an OrangePi Zero and the bottleneck is the 512MB RAM, not the CPU. With a decent SD card, it's not slow either. I can replace all of it with a Raspberry Pi 1 or 2, but the OrangePi is much smaller. Just because it can't race with a specially built workstation, doesn't mean it's useless.

by rob74 5y ago

bayindirh 5y ago

From the hardware perspective you're certainly right, but while iPhone and Android had made the initial groundbreaking in the kernel(s) and userland(s), Raspberry Pi arguably brought it to "touch distance" for the layman. Before that there were already ARM servers too, but they're few and far between. So I was trying to say that, Raspberry Pi and Apple M1 made ARM "touchable" with standard development tools and utilities for the normal people out there. So, this interaction accelerated the acceptance and software porting and grown the ecosystem faster.

GhettoComputers 5y ago
From the hardware perspective you're certainly right, but while iPhone and Android had made the initial groundbreaking in the kernel(s) and userland(s), Raspberry Pi arguably brought it to "touch distance" for the layman. Everyone already had an iPhone or Android, how was it not touch distance for the layman?
- bayindirh 5y ago
  Because to be able to interact with the OS and the system itself, you either had to Root your Android phone or Jailbreak your iPhone. OTOH, you can get a pi, add peripherals (or just network), and you have a system to be hacked and tinkered on. This is what I meant by touch distance.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Neither was very hard, Android came with root in developer tools at first, has very easy root, and you could always just chroot if that was too hard. Jailbreaking was so easy someone like Justin Beiber did it. https://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/07/29/justin-bieber-jailbroken-iphone/ https://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/07/29/justin-bieber-jailb... Saurik and the original jailbreakers did all the heavy lifting, APT, SSH, and the usual CLI tools were ported so they could enjoy their handheld Unix computers. Pi was an image on a microSD, some computer interfaces, it was very slow, burned out the microSD card, and was discouraging for me to use when I had a much better computer, the phones were easy to invest effort in, if I had a way crappy computer I wouldn't do too much with it, most people throw PiHole and never touch it again.
    - bayindirh 5y ago
      > Neither was very hard, Android came with root in developer tools at first, has very easy root, and you could always just chroot if that was too hard. Been there, done that. Doesn't matter. Tinkering with a critical life infrastructure device vs, tinkering with a device made for tinkering is different. Way different. > Jailbreaking was so easy someone like Justin Beiber did it Again, doesn't matter because of the reasons I've said earlier. I'm using both platforms for a decade, and won't do them to my primary devices either. Because these devices are handling a lot of stuff for me, tinkering with them is not an option. > Pi was an image on a microSD, some computer interfaces, it was very slow, burned out the microSD card, and was discouraging for me to use when I had a much better computer, the phones were easy to invest effort in, if I had a way crappy computer I wouldn't do too much with it, most people throw PiHole and never touch it again. Actually, with a semi-decent SD card, burning one out with a Raspberry Pi is almost impossible. If you're worried about that, you can add a ZRAM, move swap and some folders to it (as Raspbian does), and sync during reboots, or periodically. If you're downloading world on it, a USB drive can alleviate the worry too. On the slowness side, a first generation Raspberry Pi has a comparable performance to a Pentium II - 266MHz system, with similar performance to GPUs of that era. Considering the things I've done (live webcasting for example) with a P2 at that time, A Raspberry Pi is a powerhouse for its size. You may have a much better computer with way higher specs, but you're missing the point. A Pi is a literally unbrickable and forgettable Linux PC with decent performance and no noise for many tasks many people do. I'm running an home infrastructure on an OrangePi Zero and the bottleneck is the 512MB RAM, not the CPU. With a decent SD card, it's not slow either. I can replace all of it with a Raspberry Pi 1 or 2, but the OrangePi is much smaller. Just because it can't race with a specially built workstation, doesn't mean it's useless.