Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs
engadget.com
engadget.com
I think their biggest competitor is lubuntu. It's just a stripped down Ubuntu with the LXDE desktop. PIXEL also uses LXDE, and it looks like they've made a few design tweaks to the file manager. They both have Chromium as the default browser. Right now I think lubuntu supports way more machines.
I'm wondering why they didn't just use lubuntu, or just fork it and make a few changes. I've been using lubuntu on a small media PC, and I've been very happy with it.
They could of, and that might have been a great idea. Although not as headline grabby as "we made a new OS!". I think that Debian probably is slightly better on PIs simply because Raspian has been running off Debian from just after the first Pi's came out, and since Debian historically supported more architectures, so maybe makes more sense from stability standpoint to build off of Debian instead of Ubuntu. I recall the creators of Raspbian saying it was actually quite difficult as it was to port Debian to RPi 1 due to the particular architecture, so starting from Lubuntu might have been a little too difficult.
Ubuntu will run just fine on the Pi2 and 3, just not on the 1 or 0. Pixel is a mildly-tweaked version of LXDE running on Raspbian, which is a mildly-tweaked version of Debian. That's problematic, when part of their brand is providing a good environment for learning (which is helped by keeping the OS as similar as possible between different versions of the hardware).
I wanted to note that with the up coming 17.04 release it will be using the LXQt desktop environment.
Ubuntu is compiled for ARMv7, so it doesn't run on the RPi 1 and 0.
I wouldn't call it an OS or a DE.
Previous post listing reasons why I like it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12979949
Drivers can be a problem. However, [UXL]buntu finally fixed the years-old bug where the cursor goes away on devices using built-in Intel graphics. (You could make the cursor come back with CTL-ALT-F1, CTL-ALT-F7, which switches the display to text mode and back.) That prevented anyone not heavily into Linux from using the thing.
I've used XFCE for years and prefer it, even on my well-equipped machines (4-core laptop w/ 32 GB RAM and a new 16-core workstation w/ 128 GB RAM).
It looks "nice enough" and is still flexible enough that I can customize it exactly how I want. I really liked Gnome back in the "good ol' days" (2.x) but I can't stand to use it anymore.
The only issue is the name. My girlfriend pronounces "Xubuntu" like "Cthulhu".
Does chromium have a smaller memory footprint than Chrome?
If it does it's negligible after you disable google apps addons and flash.
Had the same experience, my old AMD semphron can't handle Chromium but Firefox runs just fine. That machine has 2GB DDR-I RAM but it is almost nonexistent CPU cache that kills it.
But IIRC chrom(ium|e) modifies it's memory usage quite a lot depending on the hardware it's running on.
If it's a low spec machine, it will disable many of the memory-hungry features and speed improvements.
I always wished the Puppy project would allow better browsing on the raspberry pi.
I really dislike the new Raspberry pi toolbar / desktop
The way many of my generation was taught IT was Office (with maybe some Macros), a largely useless high-level overview of networking, an out-of-date comparison of "client-server", "mainframe" and "peer-to-peer" computing etc.
It was dry. Unless you already had an interest in the field, it was boring.
It taught you enough about Microsoft Office to do your other school work, it taught you enough about the web and email to get by, and it taught out-dated terminology that you would unlearn in the real world.
It didn't teach troubleshooting of any kind. It wasn't engaging.
Many of us were already ahead of the teachers. If the teacher had a problem, it was usually a student that could give the answer. (I only had one IT teacher who wasn't below the level of a teenager with an active interest in IT.)
But the worst thing was that it didn't get people interested and didn't teach the mindsets required. The underlying logic. The basics of troubleshooting. Binary exclusion. Shit, how to deal with a paper jam!
Nowadays everyone has a smartphone, can follow a YouTube tutorial, can Google stuff, before they're in their teens.
The Pi and the teaching around it gets kids exposed to the lower levels of hardware (or at least a simplified version of). It's interesting and engaging.
There's a far bigger pay-off than "my spreadsheet looks nice". A blinking light gives a greater sense of accomplishment than a ".ppt" file.
The Pi gives the tools and motivation to actually learn the stuff you are talking about. Hook 'em with the fun stuff while still being useful.
Most kids won't need to know "ls" or "mount". They're never going to "modprobe" anything.
They are already taught the very high-level basics of the Internet and networking. But they're never going to use variable length subnet masks.
But many more kids will hopefully be interested enough to pursue careers in IT. And those who don't will at least have an appreciation for it, and will have been taught skills and a mindset invaluable in the increasingly digitally connected world in which we live.
My only complaint, and weighted by the fact that the rpi team did deliver on most feature, quality and cost while so many ventures failed to even finish prototypes, is that the SoC is a monster. So no kid will ever use it to go further than python and gpio. A stupid forth CPU would be as good for electronics, but also teach some mathematical programming ideas (recursion, trees), basically the whole computing fundamentals.
Maybe my idea would have failed.
They advertise "gigahertz", RAM, drive space, and sometimes screen size.
So everything else is left to the cheapest possible part. Updating the 5400 RPM HDD to an SSD has completely changed every single laptop a family member has brought me as "too slow to use".
I've also found it's damn near impossible to buy a cheap laptop with an SSD.
Upgrade to the latest CPU for the platform. For $25 you could gain an extra 1+ Ghz or more cores.
Max out ram, for DDR2 systems this is usually 4GB - 8GB. 2GB sticks can easily be had for under $10 a stick.
Replace hard drive with SSD. Especially if it's a low RPM hard drive. 128GB SSDs can be had for $35 on sale.
The above upgrades will easily boost performance whatever OS is already running on the hardware, and total time to install should be 1 - 2 hours.
Unless the system is too old to contain new drivers, or you're switching from x86 to arm, you shouldn't have a problem. I've done this multiple times, including a gradual upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to 16.04.
I picked up a ThinkPad T420 a few months ago on eBay for, IIRC, $180. For $250 all in, I had a nice i5 laptop w/ 16 GB of RAM and a 120 GB SSD. I didn't need it and don't really use it for anything but it's great when I need a spare or somebody else wants to use it. It could easily serve as a great primary machine for an average user (i.e. e-mail and Facebook / web browsing), though.
A Thinkpad X60 or later (dual core) with 2Gb RAM can run a 'full fat' Linux (e.g. Ubuntu or CentOS/Fedora) OK if not slick in my experience (and yes I did once compile a kernel from source on an X61s - took a few hours). An SSD makes a difference in that kind of machine.
An SSD and stock Gnome 3 Debian in my X61s (2Gb RAM) with its Atheros wifi card goes very well, so I'm hardly surprised that your machines work well with a less demanding desktop environment and it is good that you find them of use.
Care to share the output of pstree -l -A from a fresh session? That would tell us what processes are running by default (cups&c).
And before that I had a machine with 24 MB RAM and a terrible habit of recompiling the kernel or running BSD with ports.
at least yours finished. Mine would run just long enough to waste most of my day, only to error out because one lib wanted python-3.2.785.2.r58 but could only find python-3.2.1435.214.r3
Apparently I didn't learn my lesson; the next distro I used was Gentoo.
*edit: Forgot to mention also that ad blocking aids tremendously in making the internet more usable on underpowered machines.
There's a big difference between Chromebook and Linux/Pi/etc world of hardware/software experience for any person. You can throw a Chromebook to anyone and you wouldn't have to care about it. But try imagining the idea of giving Linux type OS to anyone...we know what happens next.
This is one reason why tablets (particularly starting with iPad) became popular among average crowd.
And your second point is almost moot since Chromebooks run on top of Gentoo Linux of all things.
As for the engadget link, why not link straight the source:
What hobbles the web on older hardware is not "2-4GB" but very slow processors (having to handle all that advertising Javascript, over-animated UIs, and bloated front-end frameworks).
^ This, as someone else said in this thread - javascript is the new Flash of the web. At least in the Flash days, many web designers were descent enough to include html only versions. When I'm using my old laptop with js turned off many pages become unaccessible and web makers don't even realize that so many people in the World can't afford buying new computers.
I used to do it because I had no choice (alternatives are way too expensive than what I can afford).
1) Find something to do with a Pi
2) Instead of buying a Pi, run Pi infrastructure software on an old laptop instead
If browsing doesn't work on an old laptop (although it does, but for the sake of argument...) then the bug is observed after step #2 but the actual failure location was in step #1, when "I wanna browse the web" somehow led to using a Pi to do it.
As I write this my system is consuming 440MB of 4GB, and I have many other (mainly source code) files open which I'm also working on.
OLPC was meant to come with a display and a keyboard baked in, all in a (fully open) package that you could chuck across the room; a "View Source" button to let you inspect and edit the code to all your apps; UI making it easy to set up ad hoc networks to share/collaborate with anyone around you; and to put this all into the hands of children across the world, not just first world schoolchildren and the offspring of upper-middle class tinkerers.
These just the main points from OLPC's value proposition—we're not even delving into obscure or nuanced stuff yet. How does RaspberryPi's success measure at any one of these things, let alone all of them?
I guess that one of my suspicions here is that some people are making lots of money on something that is billed and marketed as a selfless charity.
(https://www.raspberrypi.org/files/about/RaspberryPiFoundatio... is not nearly detailed enough.)
OLPC is a whole other kind of (a very academic kind of) disaster.
I think you're thinking of Broadcom.
No specific allegations. I just find it odd that Broadcom apparently still sell these chips at a low price only (?) to the RasPi foundation - just because of a personal relationship - someone who worked at Broadcom then created the RasPi foundation.
What does Broadcom get out of this exclusive relationship? (Is it still exclusive?) It just smelled odd when I first heard about this way back in 2012 or so when it first launched. Four years later there's lots of volume, but the same arrangement is still going strong. I find this peculiar.
And more importantly, what do I (as a RPi user) lose out?
If nothing else, you miss out from the benefits of stronger competition. The Odroid-W is one example of a product that appeared to be cancelled because of the Raspberry Pi Foundation's close ties with Broadcom:
https://liliputing.com/2014/08/hardkernels-raspberry-pi-like...
Broadcom sells parts cheaply or at cost and in return gets some free advertising and the appearance of being altruistic. It all seems fairly uncomplicated.
I can make 10,000 Raspberry Pi's for the same unit price I can make 1 million Raspberry Pis. There's a curve, of course, but that curve for the Raspberry Pi flattens very quickly.
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I'm only seeing this from the outside but I think the main difficulty that OLPC encountered is that their minimum economic quantity was very high, and so they had to and get these big government orders in order to justify building enough units so they could hit their cost targets. I don't know what the minimum economic quantity for OLPC was but it was probably hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, and they had trouble to achieve that.
When it was early days for OLPC and they were receiving lots of positive press attention, I saw Nicholas Negroponte argue strenuously against selling directly to industry or the public as a distraction that was beneath the dignity of the project. At that moment, it was obvious they had no hope of hitting their $100/laptop target.
The main problem of OLPC was Segway-level hubris, in my opinion.
RPi did some of the things computing enthusiasts wanted OLPC to do that weren't actually OLPC goals.
What browser does the Raspberry Pi use?
Is it only eye-candy or more substantial advantages?
Not sure I like the name though. I can see people newer to the ecosystem and other consumers getting confused between this OS and Google's line of Pixel devices.