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.
>>25
Affordable? Can't beat free. Easy to modify? An SBC where everything is soldered together, compared to a standard desktop PC?
I'll be givinig 15 years for the community to mature its understanding about the Pi internals
Broadcom isn't going to keep producing the '2835 for 15 years so anything they learn won't really have any applicability anymore.
>>26,31
The SoC itself, duh. And who says smartphones can't have powerful GPUs?
>>29
If it leaks whoever did it will be very easily tracked down. Have you looked at the one they did release publicly? Those spelling errors and omissions are intentional. They create a fingerprint that allows them to know who got what. Some of the register addresses might be at different places for the same device across different datasheets. Not saying it won't happen but as Broadcom loves lawyers and the only motivation to do it would be for lulz, I don't see it being that simple.
>>35
Wrong. The "legacy" hardware is there as a fail-safe fallback. Something like a 8259 or 6845 costs basically NOTHING on a modern deep sub-micron process. The testing required is minimal since this stuff isn't new at all - it's well-known, stable and mature.
>>37
Hardware differences don't matter all that much if you're treating the machine like a standard PC.
Name:
Anonymous2013-05-30 3:59
>>41
I don't know about >>3-kunt, but I wasn't trolling. A massive questionable binary blob that must absolutely run before anything else on an undocumented coprocessor sounds like a security threat to me. PC BIOS you could attempt to reverse engineer (and, to a certain degree, even succeed), but this is as impenetrable as your mom's diseased anus.
Now, if they provided some documentation about the GPU or provide an open source option (even lacking video/3d acceleration), things would be very different.
Name:
Anonymous2013-05-30 4:04
>>43
Could you please stop wasting your fucking time on /pork/ and port coreboot to some newer devices (e.g. thinkpads or chromebooks)?
Name:
Anonymous2013-05-30 4:29
>>44
What threat could the Raspi possibly pose without network access?
>>43
Sometimes free isn't cheap. It's not necessarily cheaper to ship school loads of 5kg computer systems around countries rather than 50g computer on a board.
>Easy to modify? An SBC where everything is soldered together, compared to a standard desktop PC?
Modify in this case doesn't mean attaching more RAM or soldering in a co-processor chip. It means hacking the system to form a different device like these http://hackaday.com/category/raspberry-pi-2/
Most PC systems use the ATX form factor for the motherboard which means it's hard to use it in the same manner.
Name:
Anonymous2013-05-30 4:41
>>46 What threat could the Raspi possibly pose without network access?
None, except you can't use it for anything even remotely sensitive. So forget about using it as a dumbed down PC. Forget about using it as a little development/text-editor machine since you can't sign your code since that would require putting your GPG private key on it and that's not a good idea.
Name:
Anonymous2013-05-30 4:47
>>47
What's stopping you to signing your code with a key generated on the Raspi? It is only yourself that's stopping yourself from using multiple keys to identify yourself.
I think the expectations students have of a Raspberry Pi vs a regular PC is an important part of the potential value for teaching.
Kids see a generic PC, get upset that it isn't running Windows, and immediately want to hop onto the internet and start looking at Youtube.
Kids see this weird tiny little thing and have no preconception of what it can and can't do, or how the interface should work. That might be enough to pique their curiosity long enough to start messing around with Lua or something.
Also to the people saying "why not just have them install a compiler on their home or school computer":
1. Those school computers running Windows are insanely locked down.
2. Not everyone owns a computer at home. Some kids' only exposure to the internet is through cell phones.
3. If they do have a computer at home, it's running Windows, which is not exactly a comfortable environment for anyone to learn to program in. They sure as hell won't be allowed to put Linux on the family machine.
4. Thus the need for a cheap computer that the kid (or the school) can put Linux on. Netbooks are cheap, Raspberry Pis are cheaper.
Sure, a good parent would give their kid an old computer running Linux at a young age to screw around with, but not everyone has good parents. Same deal with reading to your kids, which is enormously helpful for their development, but not everyone does for some reason. Same reason why people use their TVs as babysitters.
Jesus, why is the average parent so bad? I have no idea how I would properly handle temper tantrums and whatnot, but these kinds of opportunities for bonding and mental development seem like no-brainers to me.
>>60 Netbooks are cheap
Netbooks are ALMOST COMPLETELY PHASED OUT already and replaced with tablets and the useless chromebookks. Trust me, I went shopping specifically for a Netbook recently and no brick & mortar establishment had a single one.
Name:
Anonymous2013-05-30 20:26
brick & mortar establishment
If by that you mean the nearest Apple store, then yes, you'll never find a netbook there.
You could always try looking for an ultrabook, though.
>>63
No, I mean Fry's, Best Buy, Office Depot/Max, electronics sections in department stores (Walmart/Sam's, K-Mart, Target, et cetera) everywhere BUT the fucking apple store. I would only go into an apple store if I had dynamite strapped to my chest.
Name:
Anonymous2013-05-30 20:54
I would only go into an apple store if I had dynamite strapped to my chest. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALSALALLALALALLAALLAILALAALLAH
KILLKIKESBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
>>35,43
Wrong. The BIOS code that allows legacy emulation modes to work changes with each new generation of chipset. Regressions in compatibility code are incredibly common, and rarely fixed. If you're a hardware vendor, there's little incentive to find or fix bugs that don't impede booting the latest generation of Windows.
Also, no "standard PC" has really existed since the XT was released in 1983. There are scads of undocumented quirks and generational nits (Mode X, the VGA latch flip flop status bit, the ever changing contents of the EBDA) that make bare metal programming PC family machines a real pain.
>>79
It's not "emulation" at all; it's just stuff that's been there since the beginning and not touched. E.g. an 8254 is an 8254 no matter if it's the one in a PC AT or an i7 system, and works exactly the same.
The "undocumented quirks" you're mentioning are no longer undocumented, having been around for so long; FYI the standard VGA has NOT changed even in the latest GPUs, as otherwise the BIOS would have no idea how to even display the initial POST info. You seem to be talking about the time when PCs were a lot less compatible with each other, but that was the pre-Pentium days.
ACPI is another matter altogether, but if you need to interact with that then it's beyond basic PC programming.