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.
graphic drivers (Score:5, Interesting)
The bigger performance problem so far are the X window system device drivers.
Right now it seems the driver is just a frame-buffer driver and the CPU does all the work,
and is not using the GPU.
Until they write accelerated drivers, the performance will by slow.
Re:Why fork? (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, instead of spending a few hours configuring Debian to optimize it for my hardware I can just install a simple OS.
Its not that simple. Now you have to subscribe to the debian security mailing list and backport all security patches to your little customized OS.
Also some day your little offshoot OS will go away or the devs will stop working on it. Now what? That'll never happen with main line Debian.
I hate supporting special little OS like that, its absolute agony. Main line Debian or nothing, please.
The Raspberry PI is currently underpowered (Score:2, Interesting)
For only a few more dollars you could have a slightly more powerful CPU like tha allwiner A10 [wordpress.com] and a little more RAM soy you can run real debian and real ubuntu like the Beagleboard, Beaglebone and the Odroid-X can and you wouldn't need a forked, stripped linux distro, you could run the real thing. You don't need a weird graphic processor without drivers that nobody will touch, you need RAM and compatibility.
I hope they fix this in the next revision, the allwiner is selling for penauts nowadays.
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is weird when you are fixing someones XP pc and you realize that your phone has 2x the memory, a faster processor and screen with slightly more pixels than theirs. A good kind of weird.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)