Debian Derivative Optimized for the Raspbery Pi Released 95
sfcrazy writes "The Raspberry Pi foundation has announced the release of the first SD card image based on the Raspbian distribution. The image will make it easier for Raspberry Pi users to switch from 'generic' Debian Squeeze to this 'optimized' image."
The new image is based on Wheezy and optimized for ARM with floating point instructions, and supersedes the Squeeze based soft float image. Benchmarks show much improvement in performance, and the updated software in Wheezy generally improves the usability of the Raspberry Pi.
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Insightful)
If this CPU were in my cellphone, I'd have paid a LOT less for it.
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you just want a phone that works and costs $35. Not everyone has unlimited money to buy phones that have processing power that mostly exists for bragging rights.
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Raspberry PI is currently underpowered (Score:4, Insightful)
Odd...most of the uses I can come up for this machine don't have it hooked up to a monitor.
Re:The Raspberry PI is currently underpowered (Score:5, Insightful)
This leads one to the question... underpowered for what exactly?
Buy the right hardware for your project. If this doesn't fit then don't buy it. Buy the ODroid-X [techspot.com], which is a quad core 1.4 Ghz if that is better.
PI is giving me a platform to cheaply learn some stuff, so it fits my needs fine.
Re:The Raspberry PI is currently underpowered (Score:4, Insightful)
A few more dollars, so like, $40? Okay, I'd do $40 for a more powerful CPU and more RAM. Maybe $50? Sure, I have the cash. I mean, it goes against the goal and purpose of the Raspberry Pi, so it might not make the target audience happy, but sure.
Except, just some minor googling seems to put the items you're listening at $90 to $150. That's not a few more dollars. That's two to four times the cost.
Re:The Raspberry PI is currently underpowered (Score:4, Insightful)
Somewhere in between $50 and $90 is $72.49, which is the price for the Oval Elephant: http://www.ovalelephant.com/p-2062-mini-pc-android-linux-linaro-a10-chip-1gb-ddr3-ram [ovalelephant.com]
I've bought one of them, and it was shipped today. It's got a fair bit more oomph (1,5GHz Allwinner A10) than the RPI, a much neater package, an much more ram. Oh, and it's got 4GB internal flash, so you're not dependant on a SD card. It also has BGN wifi built in. It should shortly be able to run XBMC on android 4, although without HW decoding yet. It can also run linux.
Of course, it's slightly more than twice as expensive as the RPI. But it's way more than twice as valuable IMO.
Re:Why fork? (Score:4, Insightful)
Try telling that to those of us with DEC Alphas. For some bizarre reason we really won't believe you.