On 01/06/2014 12:31 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

Billie Walsh said the following on 01/06/2014 12:52 PM:

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I'm no expert, but I would venture a guess that the Raspberry Pi is so popular for two reasons

1) it's cute and a fad right now.

+1 "A Media Darling"

...

2) it's small size and easy adaptability make it very functional for adding computer controls to a variety of devices.

As if no-one has ever heard of the Arduino board. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino http://arduino.cc/ Better documented and better supported than the Pi Search for the books and add-ons

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=arduino

http://www.amazon.com/SainSmart-Module-Arduino-Board-White/dp/B003B22UR0/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1389032183&sr=8-13

http://www.amazon.com/365buying-Reader-Module-Socket-Arduino/dp/B008B52QQC/ref=sr_1_64?ie=UTF8&qid=1389032444&sr=8-64

http://www.amazon.com/SunFounder-Modules-Arduino-Mega2560-Mega328/dp/B00E0EXR9I/ref=sr_1_67?ie=UTF8&qid=1389032486&sr=8-67

And if you like robotics http://www.amazon.com/Wheel-Drive-Arduino-Robot-Platform/dp/B007JZ2ICW/ref=sr_1_83?ie=UTF8&qid=1389032552&sr=8-83

http://www.amazon.com/SainSmart-HC-SR04-Ranging-Detector-Distance/dp/B004U8TOE6/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1389032183&sr=8-15

http://www.amazon.com/HC-SR501-Sensor-Module-Pyroelectric-Infrared/dp/B007XQRKD4/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1389032183&sr=8-11

http://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Wireless-Bluetooth-Transceiver-Module/dp/B0093XAV4U/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1389032343&sr=8-19

The Arduino is very popular with RC modelers and for quadracopters - read "drones" http://www.amazon.com/Kootek%C2%AE-Arduino-MPU-6050-gyroscope-accelerometer/dp/B008BOPN40/ref=sr_1_29?ie=UTF8&qid=1389032343&sr=8-29

Yes you could apart/hack these to use with the Pi, but the point is that they are 'native' to the Arduino and it was there first.

Raspberry Pi is definitely a cuter name that Arduino. *<]:oD -- A cat is a puzzle with no solution. Cats are tiny little women in fur coats. When you get all full of yourself try giving orders to a cat. _ _... ..._ _ _._ ._ ..... ._.. ... .._ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-01-06 15:09 (GMT-0500) John Andersen composed:

It has a better chance of running KDE than that your P3.

No serious problems apparent here running KDE3 in 11.4/12.1/12.2/12.3/13.1 on my several functioning Piiis. Slowness wouldn't be the fault of the CPU of 1000MHz or more, but of 100MHz or 133MHz SDRAM and motherboard limited RAM capacity of 512M of which some possibly shared by built-in gfx. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 1/6/2014 1:46 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2014-01-06 21:09, John Andersen wrote:

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For 35 bucks you get a whole computer with the Pi. For about $65 you get a bunch of auxiliary features like a power supply case, cables etc, that you really don't need.

But not a hard disk, keyboard, and display, which an old laptop has.

Right, but these things become a liability for utility machines. They are also the first things to fail on a laptop. You plug the Raspberry into your network and talk to it with ssh. You hang as much USB storage on it as you want, and you can pop out the microsd card containing the OS and pop in a different OS. The Pi is not going to be your desktop machine. But the OP was complaining that even the old laptop is struggling with that role. And he's right about that. Got a few of those kicking around too. - -- _____________________________________ - ---This space for rent--- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) iEYEARECAAYFAlLLSDwACgkQv7M3G5+2DLJlYgCdFU1MDIoJvKUVBSeX5w4980Hx f/MAnj3EZ0lBEu5TRR4dsUb4mxB2XjVe =BQ/C -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. said the following on 01/06/2014 07:42 PM:

On 2014-01-07 01:20, John Andersen wrote:

...

On 1/6/2014 1:46 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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But the OP was complaining that even the old laptop is struggling with that role. And he's right about that. Got a few of those kicking around too.

Not really. I understands that he complains that Linux is abandoning that target. Not that those laptops can not cope, but that Linux desktops are becoming more and more demanding, needing recent hardware and abandoning older hardware.

I also feel the same.

Surely there are other, minimalist, less demanding distributions and desktops? Surely the OP doesn't have to use KDE or Gnome. Perhaps its that those old laptops came with Windows/98 and a GUI and the OP feels locked in to the GUI world and can't handle a CLI version of Linux. There are many roles where the GUI is not needed. There are many roles where the GUI can be a web service. For a long time I made use of the IPCop firewall. CLI or web interface. Ran on real old hardware too. Perhaps the problem isn't the desktop per se but the layering of the desktop on the Xserver. Perhaps the successor to XORG will be a boon. -- How long did the whining go on when KDE2 went on KDE3? The only universal constant is change. If a species can not adapt it goes extinct. That's the law of the universe, adapt or die. -- Billie Walsh, May 18 2013 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-01-07 02:40, Anton Aylward wrote:

Carlos E. R. said the following on 01/06/2014 07:42 PM:

...

I also feel the same.

Surely there are other, minimalist, less demanding distributions and desktops? Surely the OP doesn't have to use KDE or Gnome.

Well, related to that, there are several people that are coming to the forums with a common interest: they are expatriates from Windows XP (Xp goes out of support in 2014), seeking someway to keep using their same computer with something else. And considering openSUSE. If they can not succeed to make it work, they may go to another distribution, or going back to Windows. We have now an opportunity to win a bunch of new users to us. And years ago, one of Linux advantages was precissely being able to run on older hardware, contrary to Windows requiring hardware upgrades on each version upgrade. Has openSUSE abandoned this goal? Me, I have an old laptop (~10 years?) on the home server role. I use LXDE on it. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 12.3 x86_64 "Dartmouth" at Telcontar)

On 2014-01-07 04:06, Anton Aylward wrote:

I haven't been able to get it to install with only 512M of memory,

I have. I created a swap partition first with puppy :-) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 12.3 x86_64 "Dartmouth" at Telcontar)

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 3:09 PM, John Andersen wrote:

For 35 bucks you get a whole computer with the Pi. For about $65 you get a bunch of auxiliary features like a power supply case, cables etc, that you really don't need.

Add in a monitor, keyboard, mouse, storage, etc, & you are way past that.

But the $35 price includes every thing you really need, including a fully capable linux distro (three of them actually, as well as BSD). Up and running in 15 minutes, and, sporting the same processor as the Iphone 3Gs, it is no slouch in performance.

Sure, the 3gs was ok for iOS 4. But that's like saying a Pentium ran Win95 ok. I can install 13.1 on my Thinkpad A30p & be up in running as fast.

And the distro(s) available for Pi are largely complete, Debian linux, which every interested 7th grader can manage

Really? Debian is far from considered user friendly. uBuntu is but not Debian.

And supporting the ARM processor is NOT harder than supporting the multiple versions of Intel concurrently available. Its essentially no harder than a recompile of the distro with different switches. The problem isn't with the PI, its with YOUR expectations. You expect the ThinkPad to handle modern workstation loads and Bloated desktop environments. Why? Well it LOOKS just about like the machines that DO handle that load.

For one thing I fail to see exactly why these new desktops NEED so much more processing power. Eye Candy? Bling? Desktop Search tools that I & the MAJORITY of computer users don't use? I don't NEED a 3D desktop. However, the fact that my A30p has 2 DVD drive bays & that I can put a 1TB SATA in 1 or both and/or a DVD Burner & use it as a mobile server make it VERY useful to ME. No other newer machine has 2 DVD bays that I have found. Plus it's 1600x1200 IPS LCD is much better than most newer 1366x768 displays by far even being 13 years old. But that wasn't the point. My question was why do people fall over themselves for a machine that you can't upgrade the RAM, but people with machines with 512MB are told to upgrade or replace the machine because 13.1 requires 1GB RAM. What are we doing that's so much different from 5 years ago that we NEED twice the RAM? Other than using 50+ tabs in Firefox, I can't find anything in top that shows that much more RAM usage than what I was doing 5 years ago on a Dual P3/500Mhz with 512MB RAM. Sure the extra Ghz is nice for loading some web stuff, but the Pi can't be that good at displaying web pages. Can you run Flashplayer on it to watch youtube videos?(I don't know, I don't have one). That's what my son does on-line more than anything else.

But the P3 was releases almost a DECADE prior to the RaspberryPI processor.

So what? The Tualatin P3 1.4Ghz outperformed the P4 until it was past 2.4Ghz in MANY things. Then, the Pentium M was released based on the Tualatin P3. The current Core i series trace their roots to the P3. Granted my Core2 based T60p is now my main machine(mainly because it's lighter) but I still use the A30p for watching movies and doing onsite backups so it's not like I should throw it away. It works.

The Pi? Nobody expects to put KDE on that, they expect to run at the command line (although it has a Graphical User Interface if you want). It has a better chance of running KDE than that your P3.

These guys are: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=22637 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

I think that one of the big reasons folks are trying to use RPIs as computers is they're so incredibly energy efficient. For example, my wife's new 6-core computer with 8GB of memory uses >100W just idling. Why such a beefy machine? She likes to play the Sims, which doesn't work at all on low-power machines. But the fact that an RPI can run from a 5V USB adapter means that it doesn't hurt to leave it on 24x7. It's like Larry just commented - the requirements for software are so ridiculous anymore. I mean, installing Win7 taking up 20GB of hard drive space? Just for the OS? It's really sad - no wonder why things need so many resources and are so hard to troubleshoot when something blows up anymore... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 1/7/2014 3:46 PM, Billie Walsh wrote:

It really depends on what your doing. I edit a lot of television shows so a Quad with a minimum of 12 gig is not to bad. It can be done with a dual core and four gigs if you got loads of time, but anything less that a quad is no fun.

Exactly. My OpenSuse Laptop sitting next to me, (a very reliable Inspiron originally sold with Win XP home) is now running 3 time the memory DELL said it would run, A much bigger and faster hard drive, and most days is has at least one and occasionally 3 VMs running (I work on TCP apps). My main desktop machine is the same, sort of setup. Boatload of memory and quad cor processor. I use to do this type of work with a room full of computers. I don't miss them. -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 6:46 PM, Billie Walsh wrote:

It really depends on what your doing. I edit a lot of television shows so a Quad with a minimum of 12 gig is not to bad. It can be done with a dual core and four gigs if you got loads of time, but anything less that a quad is no fun.

Well sure, in that case throwing more hardware at it makes sense. What I meant was day to day tasks like web browsing, word proc, or email -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 14-01-07 08:53 PM, Billie Walsh wrote:

On 01/07/2014 07:09 PM, Larry Stotler wrote:

...

On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 6:46 PM, Billie Walsh wrote:

...

It really depends on what your doing. I edit a lot of television shows so a Quad with a minimum of 12 gig is not to bad. It can be done with a dual core and four gigs if you got loads of time, but anything less that a quad is no fun. Well sure, in that case throwing more hardware at it makes sense. What I meant was day to day tasks like web browsing, word proc, or email My, one of many, hobby(ies) is doing genealogy and genealogy/history related websites. At any given time I might have two instances of Firefox, regular and Nightly, running with fifteen to twenty tabs on each, Gimp with a couple pictures open, and eight or ten other applications open. And that's an easy day.

Those are my "day to day" tasks. *<]:oD

It is precisely the definition of "day to day" task that is critical in this branch of this discussion. Recently, I spend my time developing web applications, and the ideal target is to have my api respond to the client in under a second, though the average, including the round trip to web services my api uses, is more like 6 seconds. While an order of magnitude slower than the ideal, it remains acceptable as my competition typically averages about 20 seconds. I need not explain to most here what factors impinge on improving the responsiveness of a website, but suffice it to say, neither older machines nor entry level current machines will perform adequately IN THIS CONTEXT. I also have programs that handle batch processing of accounting data, and these take a couple days to finish. Again, these are programs you want to run on the fastest machines you can afford. In other contracts, I dealt with risk assessment models related to environmental management. In that area, it is not unusual for a useful model in that discipline to require half a million lines of highly optimized C++ code or more. And then, after many hours of compilation, the model itself may require anywhere from a day or two to a couple weeks, depending on the details of the problem. The day to day tasks of the scientists, engineers and programmers require working with such applications; and their time isn't inexpensive. They are not the kind of staff you want sitting on their thumbs waiting for their computers to finish their task. On the other hand, I have developed embedded software, in what seems like another life, and with the sort of embedded software I worked on, a tiny footprint for the OS and application code is a priority, without sacrificing capability. And on yet another hand, if one has a number of admin assistants, each using only the usual office software, the speed with which they can do their jobs is dependant on the capability of their hardware and software. Making them use older hardware, and less capable software, can slow them down significantly, making them less efficient. I'll leave it to the accounting types out there to compute the cost/benefit tradeoffs between newer, faster, hardware vs a 5% improvement in admin efficiency (it would be as idiotic to put a super computer on each admin's desk as it would be to put an old 8080 PC running DOS there). I am sure there are people out there actually doing that kind of calculation to determine when to replace older computers for businesses of different sizes. The costs associated with staff waiting on their computers can be significant. As an aside, here, I would point ot that to simply describe tasks as "web browsing, word proc, or email" is misleading. The way I browse the web now is very different, demanding a lot more of my system, than I did even 5 years ago and neither the hardware nor the software I used back then would be able to handle what I do now. Similarly, while I do not do a lot of word processing (known, when I was young, as writing), what I do now is significantly different from what I did years ago. I do more with my word processor now, just because I can, and that is just because the software supports it and the hardware is able to run it. And I would point out that what is true of me in my limited writing, is even more true of, say, admin assistants, who are able to do more, more impressively, because the software they're using supports their efforts and creativity. But, in a sense, all this discusson of day to day tasks, and the contexts in which each of us find ourselves, is beside the point. This is open source software, and a portion of the community decided it was interested in developing support for RasPi, and went ahead and did it (or are continuing to do it - I haven't followed that much). If it is true that more effort is being put into supporting RasPi than older computers, that is probably a reflection of the numbers of people who are interested in each. It seems to me that if the question is honest, one is interested in understanding why there are so many more people interested in RasPI than old PCs. If it is not so honest, it carries an implication that those who are more interested in RasPI than old PCs are somehow wrong; and that smells of arrogance. The question of what people are interested in is a value judgement, and I see no basis for passing judgement on value judgements, any more than I would accept an adverse judgement on my taste for rib-eye steak or than I would pass adverse judgement on those who mysteriously prefer salmon. I hate salmon, but if you love it, you can have any salmon allocated to me. ;-) just my $0.05 worth (since the government of Canada has done away with the penny ;-) Cheers ted -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

To me, the RPI (and derivitaves, like the UDOO, Beaglebone Black, etc.) aren't about the computer hardware. They're more about what you can do with them - interact easily with sensors, control outputs, create robotics projects, stuff like that. And then use the "mini computer" side to do stuff like log the results to a mySQL database, display them on the web, etc. without requiring a separate machine. It's basically combining an Arduino and a small computer onto the same board. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 6:22 PM, John Andersen wrote:

Grouse as you may about hardware obsolescence being forced by standard kernels and desktops. I'm with you.

But it just seems odd to turn around and badmouth the Raspberry in the same post when it is the living proof you can still do many useful things in a small machine.

My intention wasn't to badmouth the RPi. It was to ask why something so underpowered gets so much attention when there are perfectly capable machines out there that really should be more usable other than the demands of the newest versions of everything. Quite honestly, the only reason I have a 6core Phenom II in my desktop/server is for video encoding. I don't play games, edit video or anything else. Other than web browsing & checking email(which I do in webapps & have for 15+years) I don't really do anything different now than I did 10 years ago. Don't get me wrong. I used to run OS/2 & would run win16 programs in their own session so yes, that takes more resources. I also have Virtualbox installed on both my Thinkpads & my server. Until recently the P3 had win200 but now it has XP, & it works fine for what I need it to do. Sure the Core2 is more responsive but after dealing with slow computers for 30 years, having to wait isn't an issue for me. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org