The pricing and the processor of Raspberry Pi put it in the league of the XO 1.75. It is an inexpensive platform for the Fedora and Ubuntu communities to compile and run a complete desktop distribution for ARM as dogfood - which is what OLPC needs in the wild.
It needs the resources of the West (really the Global North) to make it a programmable device - you need to beg or borrow a keyboard, a USB hub, a mouse, a storage card, (an optional network connection) and a screen with an HDMI input, or a whole computer. So it isn't _really_ as portable as an XO, nor is it quite so easy to play with interesting sensors. I bet it will be a lot less fuss than flashing the boot sector of an Android phone. If I understand the videos on the Raspberry Pi site correctly, it is targetted at creating a new generation of child hackers: the present day equivalent of the bedroom game programmer who used the Sinclair, BBC, TRS-80 or Amiga microcomputers. I guess this meshes with a FONC agenda. It is quite an exciting thing, and my guess is it will sit alongside Sugar on a Stick as a cool way to allow first world kids to have the Sugar / OLPC experience : or even just enjoy viewing the source or hacking with Emacs, Vi, Eclipse, or Squeak. Or, kids who experience it will get motivated to start programming their Android devices. (Also kids could use apt install / yum to turn these tiny boxes into cheap and low power TV game consoles and home media servers.) I am sure those who have been following it longer will have even better ideas. Just my random thoughts. I am getting excited, though I still think netbooks and Arduinos are cooler. Raspberry Pi Foundation is at: http://www.raspberrypi.org/ They have stickers for sale! David _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
