Gooseberry Launches Android-based Raspberry Pi Rival 170
New submitter masternerdguy writes with this snippet from Tom's Hardware about yet another tiny, Linux-capable single-board computer: "The manufacturer claims that the Gooseberry is 'roughly 3 x more powerful in processing power,' and twice the RAM (512 MB) [compared to] the Raspberry Pi. The Gooseberry does not come with analog video and lacks a LAN port, but supports Wi-Fi. At this time, the board only supports Android 4 ICS and Ubuntu without graphics acceleration. However, Gooseberry is offering premade images for Ubuntu. Support for Arch Linux is 'expected in the future.'"
More powerful, way more open (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike the Pi, this board has an actual modern CPU (an ARMv7 Cortex-A8 at 1GHz), a more open SoC (Allwinner A10, which is a chinese ARM SoC and isn't bound by the aura of Broadcom NDAs, and also has a sane boot process unlike the Broadcom chip in the Pi that needs a GPU binblob to even boot), and its GPU (ARM Mali400), while closed (as all mobile GPUs are currently), is actively being reverse engineered and an open source driver is expected in the near future. It certainly is not perfect, but it seems a lot more palatable than the slow, outdated, and Broadcom-proprietary-to-hell-and-back Pi.
Finally, an affordable ARM SBC that doesn't actually suck. This one I'll buy.
List of more tiny Linux PCs (Score:5, Informative)
Re:size? I/O? Power? (Score:5, Informative)
There is a FAQ on their site:
http://gooseberry.atspace.co.uk/ [atspace.co.uk]
They acknowledge they don't really fully know what they have, it's a circuit board they've found and are offering.
Re:The More Competitors the Better (Score:4, Informative)
Linux market share? There's no way these systems are competing with any modern Desktop / Laptop or even a Tablet.
These systems like the Rasberry Pi are hobbyist toys at best. They're pretty much limited to learning programming and embedded projects. Trying to use them as a desktop system (I own a Raspberry Pi and I've tried it) is an exercise in frustration. I can type faster than AbiWord or LibreOffice can display the characters (I'm just an ok typist, nothing special). I hate to say this, but my old Commodore 64 running GEOS was more responsive as a word processor. Trying to use any web browser is painful. Either you're using one of the stripped down browsers (Midori / Netsurf) which are functional but they're a bit slow and don't support features like javascript which most sites require or you're using Chromium or Iceweasel and it grinds to a halt at the first sign of a script.
Now if you're typing at a bash prompt or using vi over SSH then you're fine. Even using X under LXDE or fluxbox works fairly well as long as you don't do anything to heavy. You can certainly use a basic graphical text editor or something like IDLE and of course the basic operating system GUIs like file managers work. But that's really about the limit of what you're reasonably going to be doing on the desktop. They're just not up to fulling the role most people expect as a modern computer, even a low powered one. So I don't think it's fair to say you're increasing Linux market share in the sense it's normally used (Laptops / Desktops or even typical Android devices)
Re:So, unless it's cheap, what is the point? (Score:4, Informative)
GIYF: https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+sbc [google.com] Come back and complain about my stating the obvious once you've finished reviewing those 1.7M results (this query just scratches the surface - try linux+arm, linux+mips, or linux+[processor model] to get even more options, ranging from SoCs through SoMs and SBCs).
Here's a site that posts press releases about embedded Linux devices/SBCs/etc all this time (and has for at least a decade, I believe): http://www.linuxfordevices.com/ [linuxfordevices.com]
The only thing these new products have are marketing departments that can catch the attention of a big tech press site or two. The spin from there is incredible, considering they're not really doing anything that hasn't been done thousands of times before.
Re:Links? (Score:5, Informative)
They're getting very, very close to that price point. The VIA mini/micro ATX boards have run about $75 for about five years now. There's a number of $45 motherboards that with processor and ram clock in around $65. I really don't think you can get a whole lot cheaper than that and still reliably run windows.
Most of those machines I described will run Quake 3 at 60-120fps.
Allwinner A10 (Score:4, Informative)
The CPU is an Allwinner A10 [allwinnertech.com], designed and built in China and selling for about $7. It's an impressive piece of technology.
That board, though, looks like the guts of a tablet or notebook [google.com], not a development board. There are a number of development boards available [wits-tech.com] at various price points. For $70 you can get an A10 in a box with connectors, [liliputing.com] suitable for entertainment applications.
Re:More powerful, way more open (Score:2, Informative)
FYI: 4000 a day. Sales still exceed demand right now. There's 250k+ shipped.