Raspberry Pi impressions: the $35 Linux computer and tinker toy

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/01/raspberry-pi-impressions-the-35-linux-computer-and-tinker-toy/

by suprgeek • 14 years ago

17 25 14 years ago

domwood7• 14 years ago

I'm not particularly impressed. The Pi isn't a budget computer, it's not for watching Nyan Cat or listening to podcasts, it's a computer sandboxing tool. Yes, it has teething problems but it's been designed on a minuscule budget, had little time in the wild to actually gain any traction and most definitely has not had the time required to mature the supported software. This review is targeting all the wrong things and glossing over what the Pi is actually meant for.

As a media centre or recreational tool, it's useless, but as an educational tool it's not to be rubbished. For $35 a go, I'm willing to put up with a lack of Youtube.

69_years_and• 14 years ago

Agreed, and I imagine it will not be long until a RPi is running home built UAV's (for example).

domwood7• 14 years ago

And doing stuff like that is going to make stuff like IT/Engineering education a hell of a lot more fun, rewarding and accessible.

catch233• 14 years ago

I like to think of the RPi as an arduino that can run opencv. Arduinos are nice little devices for getting started in the electronics world, but when you need to do real work, it's nice that the RPi is essentially the same price.

domwood7• 14 years ago

It's a good way of putting it. Arduinos are probably more directly rewarding and usable (if you're an Engadget reporter anyway), but if I was setting up an under 16's Comp Sci class, It'd have to be the Pi, just 'cause it's more.. educational?

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

Quite so! And whereas the Arduino has flash and ram measured in a handful of kb the Raspberry Pi has half a gig of ram onboard and supports SD cards which run at less than a dollar per gig, and runs linux of course. If you want to run Python or Erlang or host a local Postresql server on your tiny little embedded system you can do so easily with Raspberry Pi. The sorts of projects that are going to come out of this thing are going to be incredible.

TapaJob2• 14 years ago

For newbies, here's a guide i uploaded yesterday:

http://moishtech.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/setup-and-run-asteri...

linker3000• 14 years ago

I already have Asterisk/FreePBX running on my Pi and had setup an RPi Wiki page ready for some notes, but work was curtailed due to hospitalization so would you consider popping in some something, or a link, from your excellent guide. I was just working on getting DAHDI going to support conferencing and see how the board coped with that - did you get that far?

TapaJob2• 14 years ago

Sure no problem, not familiar with the RPi Wiki, drop me an email at tapajob at gmail dot com with the details.

saulrh2• 14 years ago

  because apparently it's the lack of time spent punching
  arcane commands into a terminal that has killed interest
  in computer science

Uh, actually. I think that this review is well off, and it really shows here. The command line is simple. Everybody I know learned to program by writing command-line programs. I mean, seriously, int main(){printf("hello world");}. That's incredible for education. Review it as a media center or a browser and you will be disappointed.

domwood7• 14 years ago

I sort of agree and disagree with you on the accessibility of the command line, it's definitely a lot less difficult that it was a decade ago, what with the proliferation of the internet and therefore stuff like StackOverflow, but it's still notably daunting and somewhat steep on the learning curve. Still, stuff like this is how we make it easier and more accessible.

veemjeem• 14 years ago

The reviewer probably isn't aware of the tech bubble too. All the madness that is facebook & instagram, were fueled by arcane commands in a terminal. I remember from the first bubble that made computer science so hot, we had history majors willing to switch to CS to learn these arcane commands.

adrianhoward3• 14 years ago

The command line is simple.

For certain definitions of "simple" :-)

I'm one of the people who learned of a simple command line (although on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum - didn't have access to nice little unix boxes in my day).

And of course it's a fine and good way to learn how to program.

That said - I've seen a few teens take a different route. They got into MySpace. They started wanted to "tweak" things. That got them into HTML/CSS. That got them into JavaScript. That got them into coding.

Or I've seen people start with hypercard back when hypercard was the biz.

Or I've seen people start with Director (and later Flash) and move on from there.

The other thing I saw several times back in the day when I taught development to non-dev folk was that some folk were really put off by the command line. I remember we had a course that I taught that was built around an GUI IDEish environment where folk were building a little SHRDLU type app. At the same time a subset of the course were on a "beginners C" course that was all command line driven. The C course was good and well taught - but some folk hated it, but made superb progress on the IDEish course. It was freaky to see the same people spend hours ranting about finding files and overstepping array bounds by one on one course, while successfully building basic NLP apps on another :-)

Now - I like the RasPi. It's a cute box. But I'm unconvinced that it's going to make any significant difference in the number or kind of young folk who go play with development tools. I can't really picture anybody (child or parent) purchasing one of these who wouldn't already be the type to poke at a home Linux box or PC in a developerish way.

With the way that cheap PCs get recycled is the price point going to be enough? It's great for hobbyist hackers - but they were already hobbyist hackers :-)

tluyben2• 14 years ago

Well the command line is simple, however it looks daunting at first. Even among non-programmers (like my wife); after they managed to get over their initial fear of 'learning all those difficult commands' and such, they start to loath GUIs for a lot of things.

saulrh2• 14 years ago

All true. I considered mentioning Excel, GUI builders, HTML, and flash (I'm too young to remember hypercard) but couldn't fit it into the post without rambling. That said, nearly everybody ends up at the command line eventually. Javascript error console, learning a second language, building a daemon or a library, what have you. Having started on GUI builders myself and stalled until I moved to the command line, I think that other paradigms are good for catching new programmers' attention, but the command line is where you really learn what's going on, and you have a slightly better time if you start out there.

  (child or parent)

The target that matters is probably the high school classroom. $35 (or $100 if you include a monitor) is small enough to be covered by a bog-standard lab fee. They can't send a desktop home with every student - too bulky, wouldn't be homogeneous, even recycles are too expensive - but you can hand them all rpis.

catch233• 14 years ago

The community for RPi is small mostly because it's impossible to get one. They really need to ramp up manufacturing to get the device into more hands. I ordered one 5 weeks ago from element14 but it looks like I'll still have to wait another month or two to get mine.

oylenshpeegul• 14 years ago

I like how it said this

    In fact, simply launching Engadget was enough to pin the CPU and
    bring the OS to a standstill for at least a few minutes.

with no apparent irony or shame. I mean, some might take that as a sign that their website could benefit from some attention.

anigbrowl• 14 years ago

I thought the exact same thing. Engadget is a blog, it ought to be lightweight.

Raspberry Pi impressions: the $35 Linux computer and tinker toy

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