The Icon Bar: General: Raspberry Pi review on The Register
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Raspberry Pi review on The Register |
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filecore (06:29 22/5/2012)
andypoole (08:51 22/5/2012)
filecore (09:52 22/5/2012)
trevj (11:29 22/5/2012)
swirlythingy (13:04 22/5/2012)
trevj (15:04 22/5/2012)
jess (13:38 25/5/2012)
trevj (17:51 25/5/2012)
sirbod (20:33 25/5/2012)
swirlythingy (20:48 25/5/2012)
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Jason Togneri |
Message #120447, posted by filecore at 06:29, 22/5/2012 |
Posts: 3868
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Article: http://www.reghardware.com/2012/05/22/review_raspberry_pi_arm_pc/
Summary: 90%, "Unbelievable bang-for-your-buck educational/hobbyist ARM-based PC."
While the author initially states that "The RPi is a credit-card sized GNU/Linux computer", he talks about operating systems at the end of page 3, noting that: "RISC OS, which has a strong following in education, has already been seen in the wild." He points with a link to this article on riscosopen.org.
[Edited by filecore at 07:30, 22/5/2012] |
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Andrew Poole |
Message #120449, posted by andypoole at 08:51, 22/5/2012, in reply to message #120447 |
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While the author initially states that "The RPi is a credit-card sized GNU/Linux computer", he talks about operating systems at the end of page 3, noting that: "RISC OS, which has a strong following in education, has already been seen in the wild." He points with a link to this article on riscosopen.org. Surely it should be had a strong following in education, not has... I'm pretty sure most schools run windows or os x now  |
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Jason Togneri |
Message #120450, posted by filecore at 09:52, 22/5/2012, in reply to message #120449 |
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He said "following", not "usage rate". Probably a lot of older teachers remember using them earlier in their careers and a lot of younger teachers used them in school themselves. They might well jump on the it-was-good-enough-for-me nostalgia bandwagon if RO comes to the RPi. |
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Trevor Johnson |
Message #120451, posted by trevj at 11:29, 22/5/2012, in reply to message #120449 |
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In a (small and insignificant) unofficial poll in 2010, zero out of seven edugeeks who responded said, "Good riddance to RISC OS." |
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Martin Bazley |
Message #120455, posted by swirlythingy at 13:04, 22/5/2012, in reply to message #120451 |
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A lot of the comments seem to be bemoaning how the X desktop needs far more memory, hardware acceleration and processing power than the Pi can provide. Indeed, a not insignificant fraction of posters on the thread appear incredulous that anybody could ever even entertain the ridiculous notion that 256MB - that's two hundred and fifty-six megabytes of RAM - was anything approaching the proper requirements for running "a full desktop stack".
Currently, my Iyonix is using 78.5MB of its RAM, out of a total of a piddling little 512MB. By far the most significant consumer is NetSurf, with a total of 18.4MB claimed (although admittedly it's not displaying anything more complex than TIB at present). I have a 16MB RAM disk configured (currently empty and hence completely wasted), which is the next most significant memory hog. After that it falls off rapidly. The Pinboard, which is displaying a large sprite, chews up 4788KB. SpamStamp claims a total of 4140KB, and DigitalCD and all its various modules (it's playing MP3s at present) account for 5396KB.
The RISC OS ROM itself, of course, is loaded into 4MB, with another 3MB set aside for "memory management". All my various modular trash in the RMA fits inside 12MB, and none of what's left (Messenger Pro, hardware buffers, disk maps) takes up more than 2MB individually, and adds up to the remaining sum of just under 12MB together.
This is, of course, with no "swap file". And I bet I'm doing more simultaneously than any of those commentards attempted with their Pis.
The Pi may be the perfect hardware for RISC OS, but this is the first time I've seriously considered the possibility that RISC OS may be the perfect software for the Pi. Taking into account the fact that nobody seems to think it's a serious desktop replacement (and that it has software availability issues anyway, since ARM is only barely supported by Linux), RISC OS's unparalleled ability to capitalise on ingrained nostalgia in exactly the sector - education - the Pi is hoping to target, and another common complaint that, while Linux is better than Windows, it's still overly complex, unconducive to programming and unlikely to encourage children to jump through all the necessary hoops to get coding in a way the BBC - and, to an extent, its last direct biological descendant - did, we may well have more cards in our hands than we realise. |
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Trevor Johnson |
Message #120458, posted by trevj at 15:04, 22/5/2012, in reply to message #120455 |
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[...] we may well have more cards in our hands than we realise. At least until whatever the Raspberry Pi equivalents of the Master or Archimedes are become available! |
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jess hampshire |
Message #120491, posted by jess at 13:38, 25/5/2012, in reply to message #120455 |
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We really need to get a decent amount of educational software available, how much of the old stuff would work as is (BBC BASIC) and how much would be easily ported? |
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Trevor Johnson |
Message #120492, posted by trevj at 17:51, 25/5/2012, in reply to message #120491 |
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We really need to get a decent amount of educational software available, That could be informative (I think a fair bit was written by teachers), but I guess you probably mean a decent selection rather than the actual quantity.
how much of the old stuff would work as is (BBC BASIC) and how much would be easily ported? I s'pose the BASIC stuff may need at least screen modes changing for non-WIMP titles. There's also copy protection, of course.
...Which leads on to the usual copyright issues. Some titles considered abandonware could possibly be hosted somewhere. But it'd really need some sort of coordinated effort to try obtain permissions from authors/owners (for those that can be contacted) for official redistribution of titles.
For the preschool/primary stuff, there's such a large selection of apps available for parents' mobile platforms that it's not easy to guarantee the usefulness of RISC OS titles IMHO. Maybe older kids may have some interest in writing/modifying progs for youngsters at school/home?
Mind you, if any schools kit out new programming suites with the hardware, then it'd arguably be there for the rest of the school to use too. So maybe some educational titles could actually have a place. |
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Jon Abbott |
Message #120493, posted by sirbod at 20:33, 25/5/2012, in reply to message #120492 |
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There's also copy protection, of course.
...Which leads on to the usual copyright issues. Some titles considered abandonware could possibly be hosted somewhere. But it'd really need some sort of coordinated effort to try obtain permissions from authors/owners (for those that can be contacted) for official redistribution of titles. If its disc copy protection, it can be imaged into a JFD/APD and mounted under ADFFS.
Hosting...I've been having discussions with The Centre for Computing History about imaging all the Arc floppies, they've kindly offered to host a site...but can I get anyone to help design it...no.
I'm also trying to get SPS more involved in the Arc scene, so we can create master images, early days on that though.
Obtaining permission...This is the tricky part, from the discussions I've had in the gaming world, large swathes of licenses are held by a small group of companies that want to make money on their investment and have no interest in being charitable...or even sell the licenses. In the education world, I suspect there are lots of little independents, whom are untraceable now. |
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Martin Bazley |
Message #120494, posted by swirlythingy at 20:48, 25/5/2012, in reply to message #120493 |
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Obtaining permission...This is the tricky part, from the discussions I've had in the gaming world, large swathes of licenses are held by a small group of companies that want to make money on their investment and have no interest in being charitable... Are these the same companies which do not actually sell the games they own the rights to? They can't be all that keen to make money.
(What's really needed for the burgeoning retro software scene is some sort of central online store for downloadable commercial disc images, available at a reduced (but non-trivial) price. I'm convinced this would easily be a commercial success. The software's still available and the rights holders still make money. But nooooo, that would be far too sensible... *)
* Speaking as someone recently embittered about the generally neophobic and self-destructive nature of certain sectors of big business, after reading a large advert in this morning's Metro in which Blockbuster, the failing chain of distributors of 20th century-era physical media, proudly announced an exclusive deal it had signed to rent out the latest Daniel Radcliffe vehicle by means of huge text reading, "Available before Netflix or LoveFilm!" Such a fine snapshot of the concerns and priorities of the industry which so recently complained that the American government wasn't corrupt enough to force through the laws it had written and paid them large sums of money to pass. |
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The Icon Bar: General: Raspberry Pi review on The Register |
