I'm not against the Pi as a learning machine. I just don't understand why it, being so underpowered is ok to play with, but if you want to use a real machine you are told that anything less than a Core2 with 8GB RAM is too underpowered to do any real work on. The Pi is far faster than my Powerbook 3400 with it's 240Mhz G3, but then again, it only gets used occasionally for writing. I have Clasilla on it, which is a continuation of Mozilla for Mac OS 9, & I can go online with it but you can't expect much from it with only 144MB RAM. A programmer once told me that he wrote to use all abvailable resources whether they were needed or not. Back barely 15-20 years ago, there was no choice but to optimize code. Now, it seems like no one is optimizing code but just churning out programs. Why waste time making programs leaner & more stable when we need to add all these new nifty features that most people never use. What was that old saying? 80% of users only user 20% of a programs features. Or something like that. On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 5:23 PM, Larry Stotler <larrystotler@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 3:09 PM, John Andersen <jsamyth@gmail.com> 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:
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