Take a look at http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324575 What caught my eye was the line <quote> Having said this, the majority of today's low-cost microcontroller boards are really focused toward supporting beginner and intermediate level projects -- there aren’t a lot of low-cost options available for expert users. </quote> Yes, I recall the Pi was intended as a teaching tool, a low end and low cost item. However it seems to have taken off and competed with the Arduno. And more! I recall how UNIX took off as a teaching tool in the 1970s and how after it became commercial available and implemented on low cost micros in the 1980s there was a burst of development, only exceeded by the development around the IBM PC. But the IBM PC also legitimized the "pc' market that was bumbling along with 8080s and z80s. Came the 386 and SCO UNIX/Xenix/Convergent and there was a whole new industry. Then came Linux. The big difference, I see, between the Arduno and the Pi is Linux. *NIX has always made serious development easy. Linux is continuing that tradition and the Pi made that available to another group of hobbyists. The threshold got lower and lower. So here is another watershed. From a Linux POV its rather more mainstream and LOT more capable. Put that "LOT" is bold and glowing letters. This may not quite compete with our four core, 8G memory and RAID 10 desktops, not even most tablets and phones in terms of memory and power, but its more than adequate for driving many embedded systems. This could drive a TV - it has the HDMI port - a music server, and more. Things computer intensive rather than memory intensive perhaps. It is a 64-bit processor. Why Suse? Why Linux? Under my desk, as I've mentioned, I have a headless single core 800MHz long retired slimline SFF desktop out of the Closet of Anxieties doing DNS/DHCP + Postfix running Suse 11.2 and not breaking into a sweat. Its retired because it could only run Windows XP, but I suspect it will run 13.2 OK :-) I suspect it could even run RADIUS+LDAP. The trick is not to run X11. Its GPU is pathetic. But the GPU on this Gizmo is 300MHz Radeon 8000 Series and that's quite another matter! Perhaps use this as a X-terminal for a multi-slice main processor? How good is Suse at distributed computing? Oh, and there's the matter of power consumption! http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Jaguar/AMD-G-Series%20GX-210HA%20-%20GE210HICJ... So, what's it to be, The ARM of PI or the more traditional X86/64 architecture of the Gizmo? I think I'll leave Arduno for small robots and other toys. -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org