What are your guys views, on the raspberry pi? Tons of kids in my school are like "OMG IT'S LIKE A COMPOOTER YOU CAN PROGRAM YOURSELF LOOK I MADE IT SAY HELLO WORLD IN PYTHON" now don't get me wrong, everyone needs to start somewhere, it's just why with this, what's wrong with just installing linux on your laptop, it's just a slow linux computer. As far as I can tell it's only use is teaching intermediate programmers lower level stuff when they start using the GPIO pins and such.
>>19 A GTX 680 will work as a standard VGA card if you want to program it and the docs for IBM VGA are everywhere. BIOS is mostly a blob but you don't need to use it, since the hardware is so well documented.
I know you know better than this. The only reason things like 8259, 8042, and VGA compatibility modes still exist is because 32 bit Windows 7 and earlier require them. Once the retail pipeline for systems with those OSes is flushed, hardware manufacturers will drop support for the compatibility modes so fast your head will spin. Integration testing all that compatibility gunk every cycle is ungodly expensive, and vendors won't pay if they can get away with not doing it.