What is benefit of buying a Pi rather than Linux Partition.

1) You can continue to use your Windows partition while running Linux on the 'pi.

2) The 'pi has a nice small SD card as storage. You can easily store an image on your PC that you can shove to the SD card if your child manages to make the SD card unbootable.

3) could be used to "control" things around the house and cost less in terms of power.

(And many more. But if you're asking, maybe a Raspberry Pi is not for you. Feel free to just use a Linux partition on your PC if you want to experiment with Linux).

The point is that if you have a linux partiton, and you let your kids play with it. 

1) Your kids can still do   dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda  and wipe your data. (even windows data)

2) you only have one computer.  So you can't read the documentation on your normal computer while playing with the Pi

3) You can buy multiple (cheap) SD cards for the Pi.  Boot off different cards for different purposes

4) You don't need to spend time shrinking the windows partition before installation.

I have a laptop with a dual-boot, Linux and Windows. I leave it in Windows because it's used by me, my wife, and my preschooler for various things they're used to doing in Windows (email & websurfing, and kid's videos on YouTube- haven't got the latter working properly in Debian yet).  Switching the OS requires rebooting which takes an annoyingly long time; sleep/wake is much faster, so it gets left in Windows.  My other PC has video editing software which I use regularly (got to keep sending cute kid videos to grandparents) and the software isn't available on Linux. I guess I could have a dual boot but there's the same annoyance about reboot time, and having got the system working I don't really want to mess with it.

The laptop uses about 25 watts and the desktop is 90 watts (not including the monitor), so it would be nice to have a Linux PC I can leave on all the time, doing data aquisition etc, at just a few watts it draws less than many A/V appliances take in standby.

You can embed your raspi into a wall socket, or attach it to a rocket, or put it in a robot, or a quadcoptor, and have it drive, or fly itself around the room.

That's why its better then dual building.

Well, you really don't need a Raspberry Pi to use Linux. Any standard PC is good for that and it will still be much more powerful in terms of number crunching etc. than the RasPi. You just can't get any other computer of that size, power consumption and versatility for that prize.

If many people ordered a Pi just to look "what this Linux thing is about" I wouldn't be surprised if there will be many used ones available on ebay etc. in a few months... we'll see. At the other hand it's not the worst thing; the RasPi comes with a few readily available *real* Linux distribution while most of the Linux Netbooks available for a short time in the past (likely to be the only linux-driven devices with a visible linux ever hitting the real consumer market and not only specialised people knowing where and what to order) had been preloaded with some pretty downsized and extremely tailored Linux distributions not showing the real possibilities of that OS.

Regards

   Peter

Price.

(Assuming none of the other benefits interest you.)

Thanks for the comments. But I think Raspberry Pi is not for me. Well least not at the moment.

I have two daughters one 15 and one 19 neither are into IT I am glad to say. I have spent 40 years in the I.T. industry 30 years with IBM, but would not recommend it as a career. Least it did not work out great for me. A lot of your skils become redundant and even if you work on a sucessful project it gets replaced n months down the line. After 40 years of age you are really vunerable to be replaced by younger cheaper people, unless you are into management of project management. Experience and adaptability does not seem to count for much. Plus in recent years there has been a lot of offshoring to India and China.

The Pi would be for me to play with, but it does not work out cheap as I don't have room in my study for a extra TV screen which I don't have anyway and would have to upgrade my monitor from VGA. Plus no doubt there would be powered hub, SD cards etc.

As far as electronic interfacing is concerned. I have a number of unfinished PIC projects that I really should complete before moving on.

I have run Linux (Ubuntu) for a number of years so if the Pi throws up any interesting software, I hope it will also be available on x86.

The Pi is certainly creating a lot of interest and I hope it succeeds, but it worries me that I have seen a lot of machines go to the local dump that were better specified than a 300Mhz Pentium 2. I also am concerned that schools will spend a lot of money buying TV's etc when they could just as well install scratch/squeek/Logo on their existing equipment.

Your assessment sounds very reasonable, Keith.

The Pi is just a board, and if it doesn't fulful your requirements then it doesn't.  It would not be rational to buy it just because of the hype and peergroup pressure from fanbois.

Perhaps one day you'll have a requirement that it does satisfy, or perhaps by then some competing device will be even better or even cheaper, who knows.  Always be rational in your choices.  It sounds like you have thought about it well enough and made a reasonable decision here.  Perhaps the explanation you have given could even be of value to others in similar circumstances, and hence was useful.

If you have to ask why, then there is a very good chance the Pi is not for you. 

If you are interested in writting CPU intensive memory hogging apps, then the Pi is certainly not for you.

One of the intended uses for the Pi is in classrooms where they cannot afford to buy full blown computers for each student.

If you like to tinker and build projects, maybe taking advantage of some of the GPIO pins (try that on your PC), then the Pi is absolutely for you.

I just can't wait to see all the different projects people com up with to embed their Pi's in !

More reading for those interested http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/educational-applications/why-pi-when-you-can-just-run-linux/page-5