Founder explains the Raspberry Pi journey so far | Hacker News Reader

Founder explains the Raspberry Pi journey so far

geek.com

32 points11031a10 comments

I've had a RPi for a few weeks now and despite being a big supporter of everything they are aiming for I have been disappointed.

My children's initial experience was it doesn't work properly.

* It doesn't boot up ready to program. It boots to a linux configuration box.

* There is no help or how to get started outside of the usual linux stuff.

* It doesn't work with all HDMI devices, It's the ONLY electronics product I have ever come across that requires me to edit the overscan settings

* It doesn't work with MANY popular USB devices even some Hubs fail to work with it

* If you don't get the right power supply you will encounter weird errors.

I support RPi, I'll buy the next generation but this version is NOT ready for those hungry kids out there.

When we got our first Micros they worked out of the box, came with extensive manuals and getting started guides and were great fun. The RPi seems like a chore to get started with. Once setup my kids were off but of they were on their own they would have been stuck.

They've made it clear all along this isn't the Raspberry Pi ready for schools. This is the enthusiats version, the one that spurs the development of the tools, the guides, and the supporting hardware. We're already seeing this with projects like ModMyPi that sell you a complete (compatible) set of peripherals, and the OS course that appeared on HN yesterday. This is the groundwork being laid for what you desire.

Linux itself isn't totally ready for the ARM platform, so how can you just expect it to have a linux ready to program?

I have a Fujitsu LED monitor and a sony bravia LCD TV. RPi works flawlessly with them without requiring me to do any manual setting.

While trying to use RPi with various USB devices, let's not forget that RPi uses the least amount of energy and that means too little power will be allocated to the USB ports so in this case a USB hub will hardly work.

I use a GreenHeart certified ps of Sony Ericsson, no problems so far.

I "grew up" in the 80s with computers that barely worked. It took hours of fiddling with jumpers and IRQ settings to get simple CGA programs to run (not to mention copy). Even in the 90s in college, to play the fun games (xtank, hunt, muds) I had to compile them myself - not always straightforward with the myriad exotic flavors of unix prevalent at the time. It was NOT "magic".

This is the experience that taught me how computers work. This is why was enraptured by Norton's _Inside The IBM PC_ when I was 14. Without the early struggle, I'd be just another clueless user waiting for the Acolytes of Steve Jobs to come down from the mountain with a new miracle.

Screw that. When you're young, it _should_ be a struggle. Kids shouldn't be able to take technology for granted, they should have to figure it out. If and when I have kids, I'm going to make sure that their technology breaks at regular intervals and if they want to keep playing Super Mario 18, they're going to have to figure out how to fix it themselves.

All these problems you mention with Rasberry Pi make me think it is ideal for teaching children to program computers.

This submission brought to you by a likely and undisclosed Ziff Davis employee aka geek.com / extremetech.com / pcmag.com, all of which have quite an interesting history on HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4462390

I've had the pleasure to meet Eben in person when he gave a talk at a recent HN London meet-up. He turned up in a HAL 9000 tshirt which was a good start. He's a genuinely fantastic guy, down to earth and has an incredibly positive outlook on life.

Most people forget that Raspberry Pi is a not-for-profit organisation and his number 1 priority really is making tech accessible and has little to no obvious interest in making millions in the process.

I've bought 10 of these, and gave 3 for free to my colleagues. One of them was able to turn it for few hours into something usable for the stuff he does at work.

I'm currently looking into the Broadcom provided libraries residing in /opt/vc - written in "C" they are easily reachable by luajit through the ffi with just few lines of code.

Also with these libraries you can stay in console mode, and program as you were back in Apple ][ days. I'm actually thinking of deleting X11, and with mc, git, emacs, and few other tools it brings backs memories of my old venerable BASIC on the Apple ][

Oh, and the 1080p decoding is awesome. It's even more awesome when there is an example how to do ti (again from Broadcom).

I think the Raspberry Pi would be more interesting if it were to ship with LuaOS or some such similar thing. The incompleteness of it as a Linux workstation just doesn't differentiate it well enough from the Pandora, or Beagle, or PandaBoardES, or gumstix, in the world and so on..

Maybe someone with a Raspberry Pi, disappointed with the 'non-programmability' of the device out of the box, would be better serviced once they get LOAD81 installed on it?

http://github.com/antirez/load81

Just an idea ..

Original Vimeo video (just in case someone like me prefers the bigger box) -> http://vimeo.com/45447698

I think the pi has been great, and am currently using it as a NAS. As a programming platform it's a great introduction to programming for ARM.

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