4 ms·

Endless marketing for an obsolete surplus item (your last phone is likely to be more capable). Just to clarify: - doesn't work without proprietary blobs, ie. y

by Create 14y ago

Endless marketing for an obsolete surplus item (your last phone is likely to be more capable). Just to clarify: - doesn't work without proprietary blobs, ie. you are NOT allowed to learn how it works. - doesn't make use of the hardware w/o additional license crippleware for the fans to clear the fog: http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-unsuitable-for-education/ http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-un... http://boingboing.net/2010/09/19/intel-drm-a-crippled.html http://boingboing.net/2010/09/19/intel-drm-a-crippled.html The VideoCore graphics processor on the Raspberry Pi in particular needs drivers that do not comply with Fedora's licensing guidelines. Let alone DFSG. Go with an openwrt friendly router instead (the audio noise and desktop experience is substandard on the pi anyway)

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
That's all well and good. You're right, it isn't ideal. But it is still miles ahead of many other popular edu oriented trainers and dev kits. Call it a very good start to a sea-change in educational hardware if you like.
jwr 14y ago
Your critique is unfair and one-sided. As an example, I use the PI as an ethernet/web bridge for my microcontroller projects. Your "openwrt friendly router" won't necessarily have (documented!) GPIO pins I can access, a 3.3V-level UART, SPI or I2C. With the Pi, it took me all of 5 minutes to hook up an MSP430-based device via UART, and another 10 minutes to get a perl script that talks to it via the (included) driver for the UART. Anyone that tries to compare the Pi to the "android sticks out there" forgets that there are people for whom time is important. I'd much rather start with a popular, documented and well-supported (as in: downloadable distro image that supports all of the hardware) device than hack my way through an undocumented jungle of hardware/software. And I do know what I'm doing, I've written Linux drivers before. I t's just not something I want to do every time I start a new project. I also think that in spite of the critique of the lack of openness, this is a breakthrough project. Broadcom has been famously secretive and closed. Getting anything from them without being a multi-million device maker and having an NDA has been a nightmare. Now I hope Broadcom will notice that lifting the veil a little brought in some money. I found the Pi to be an excellent tool, I am thankful to its creators and I wish them all the best.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Not to mention the "openwrt friendly router" replaces a "substandard" desktop experience with a non-existent desktop experience... That's like saying "the back of a Prius is a bit cramped for my kids as they are growing up, so I replaced it with a motorcycle".
  - jwr 14y ago
    Well, perhaps, but I really don't understand why people buy Raspberry Pis and try to use them as desktop machine. I mean, this thing doesn't even come with a case, it is clearly not a desktop. It's a hacker's tool. There is the second crowd that wants to use them as poor-man's video devices, hooked up to TVs. That's fine, and I actually tried running Raspbmc on it. It works. Kind of. Until it breaks. But it isn't your optimal, finely polished and tuned media machine. And I really don't think there is much point in doing it. The Pi is a hacker's tool. It's great for learning, hobby electronics, various interfacing needs, and lots of other things. But it isn't a notebook, it isn't a desktop, and it isn't a media device.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      As I see it, the value in a pi is that it is balanced. You can get cheaper devices, you can get devices with more GPIO, you can get devices with lower power consumption, and more powerful devices. The Pi sits in a sweet spot with all of those factors though, things like usb-dongle computers and openwrt friendly routers push all of those nobs one way or the other. Also, maybe I'm weird but I have never liked xbmc regardless of the device; it is just plain shitty. The pi that I'm using as my home server/media player right now I just use with omxplayer. After years of just using mplayer that is much more comfortable to me. Of course I also use my Roku primarily with curl...
jmillikin 14y ago
> Endless marketing for an obsolete surplus item (your > last phone is likely to be more capable). My phone indeed has more computing power than a Pi, but it also costs ten times as much. The attraction of a Pi is that it's an inexpensive computer. > - doesn't work without proprietary blobs, ie. you are > NOT allowed to learn how it works. This is a frankly stupid thing to say. Having a small binary blob somewhere deep in the ROM doesn't prevent you from understanding the rest of the system. > - doesn't make use of the hardware w/o additional > license crippleware The Pi includes optional features that depend on proprietary software. They're not required to use the Pi as intended, in its role as an inexpensive computer for students. Would you prefer that the patent-encumbered features simply be left out? > http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-un... That link is discussing how the Pi is unsuitable for advanced low-level hardware hacking. While that's true, it's also irrelevant, because people who want to lay out their own FPGAs in VHDL are not the target audience. There are already many other products to serve that niche. > http://boingboing.net/2010/09/19/intel-drm-a-crippled.html This link has nothing to do with the Pi. The Pi has optional features that require a license fee due to current patent laws. The Pi foundation is not making money on license fees. > The VideoCore graphics processor on the Raspberry Pi > in particular needs drivers that do not comply with > Fedora's licensing guidelines. Let alone DFSG. They do not need non-free drivers. I have a Pi, and it can get by just fine with entirely free drivers included in Debian. Once again, you're complaining that there are optional features (here, better OpenGL performance) that require proprietary software. > Go with an openwrt friendly router instead (the audio > noise and desktop experience is substandard on the pi > anyway) Are you trolling? How on earth is a router an acceptable replacement for a computer?
drivers99 14y ago
A router isn't going to have audio and video out. Don't think it would have USB for input, pins for miscellaneous circuits that you want to connect to it. All it has is wired and wireless network connections, perhaps a serial port, right? Or am I missing something. I'd be really curious if there was a lot more you could do with them than I think.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Some higher-end routers have USB, meant for printers or usb drives or whatnot. Mine does... of course I could have bought several Pis for what I paid for it in addition to the numerous other downsides.
samstave 14y ago
It's $30 and has an HDMI port. It's a fantastic little device.
juan_juarez 14y ago
That Intel thing is nothing new - IBM was doing that on mainframes 30 years ago.

by Create 14y ago

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago

That's all well and good. You're right, it isn't ideal. But it is still miles ahead of many other popular edu oriented trainers and dev kits. Call it a very good start to a sea-change in educational hardware if you like.

jwr 14y ago

Your critique is unfair and one-sided. As an example, I use the PI as an ethernet/web bridge for my microcontroller projects. Your "openwrt friendly router" won't necessarily have (documented!) GPIO pins I can access, a 3.3V-level UART, SPI or I2C. With the Pi, it took me all of 5 minutes to hook up an MSP430-based device via UART, and another 10 minutes to get a perl script that talks to it via the (included) driver for the UART. Anyone that tries to compare the Pi to the "android sticks out there" forgets that there are people for whom time is important. I'd much rather start with a popular, documented and well-supported (as in: downloadable distro image that supports all of the hardware) device than hack my way through an undocumented jungle of hardware/software. And I do know what I'm doing, I've written Linux drivers before. I t's just not something I want to do every time I start a new project. I also think that in spite of the critique of the lack of openness, this is a breakthrough project. Broadcom has been famously secretive and closed. Getting anything from them without being a multi-million device maker and having an NDA has been a nightmare. Now I hope Broadcom will notice that lifting the veil a little brought in some money. I found the Pi to be an excellent tool, I am thankful to its creators and I wish them all the best.

jlgreco 14y ago
Not to mention the "openwrt friendly router" replaces a "substandard" desktop experience with a non-existent desktop experience... That's like saying "the back of a Prius is a bit cramped for my kids as they are growing up, so I replaced it with a motorcycle".
- jwr 14y ago
  Well, perhaps, but I really don't understand why people buy Raspberry Pis and try to use them as desktop machine. I mean, this thing doesn't even come with a case, it is clearly not a desktop. It's a hacker's tool. There is the second crowd that wants to use them as poor-man's video devices, hooked up to TVs. That's fine, and I actually tried running Raspbmc on it. It works. Kind of. Until it breaks. But it isn't your optimal, finely polished and tuned media machine. And I really don't think there is much point in doing it. The Pi is a hacker's tool. It's great for learning, hobby electronics, various interfacing needs, and lots of other things. But it isn't a notebook, it isn't a desktop, and it isn't a media device.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    As I see it, the value in a pi is that it is balanced. You can get cheaper devices, you can get devices with more GPIO, you can get devices with lower power consumption, and more powerful devices. The Pi sits in a sweet spot with all of those factors though, things like usb-dongle computers and openwrt friendly routers push all of those nobs one way or the other. Also, maybe I'm weird but I have never liked xbmc regardless of the device; it is just plain shitty. The pi that I'm using as my home server/media player right now I just use with omxplayer. After years of just using mplayer that is much more comfortable to me. Of course I also use my Roku primarily with curl...

jmillikin 14y ago

> Endless marketing for an obsolete surplus item (your > last phone is likely to be more capable). My phone indeed has more computing power than a Pi, but it also costs ten times as much. The attraction of a Pi is that it's an inexpensive computer. > - doesn't work without proprietary blobs, ie. you are > NOT allowed to learn how it works. This is a frankly stupid thing to say. Having a small binary blob somewhere deep in the ROM doesn't prevent you from understanding the rest of the system. > - doesn't make use of the hardware w/o additional > license crippleware The Pi includes optional features that depend on proprietary software. They're not required to use the Pi as intended, in its role as an inexpensive computer for students. Would you prefer that the patent-encumbered features simply be left out? > http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-un... That link is discussing how the Pi is unsuitable for advanced low-level hardware hacking. While that's true, it's also irrelevant, because people who want to lay out their own FPGAs in VHDL are not the target audience. There are already many other products to serve that niche. > http://boingboing.net/2010/09/19/intel-drm-a-crippled.html This link has nothing to do with the Pi. The Pi has optional features that require a license fee due to current patent laws. The Pi foundation is not making money on license fees. > The VideoCore graphics processor on the Raspberry Pi > in particular needs drivers that do not comply with > Fedora's licensing guidelines. Let alone DFSG. They do not need non-free drivers. I have a Pi, and it can get by just fine with entirely free drivers included in Debian. Once again, you're complaining that there are optional features (here, better OpenGL performance) that require proprietary software. > Go with an openwrt friendly router instead (the audio > noise and desktop experience is substandard on the pi > anyway) Are you trolling? How on earth is a router an acceptable replacement for a computer?

drivers99 14y ago

A router isn't going to have audio and video out. Don't think it would have USB for input, pins for miscellaneous circuits that you want to connect to it. All it has is wired and wireless network connections, perhaps a serial port, right? Or am I missing something. I'd be really curious if there was a lot more you could do with them than I think.

jlgreco 14y ago
Some higher-end routers have USB, meant for printers or usb drives or whatnot. Mine does... of course I could have bought several Pis for what I paid for it in addition to the numerous other downsides.

samstave 14y ago

It's $30 and has an HDMI port. It's a fantastic little device.

juan_juarez 14y ago

That Intel thing is nothing new - IBM was doing that on mainframes 30 years ago.