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

Well the raspbery pi is for hobbyists who like to experiment, learn computing, and people who are creative enough to make gadgets.  In terms of computing power it can not a fraction of the things a normal PC can do.  But the creative person can make programs, turn it into a media center, make it control a robot, make a complex sensor, controller devices.

It is not for general purpose computing.  I guess you have to decide what you want it for.  The majority of people who have ordered the pi are in it for the adventure, not for the work (hopefully).

I have 2 PC's and a laptop and they are all dual boot and I would only boot into windows to play a game or do my accounts. Otherwise it's Linux all the way. Not only do I e-mail, surf the net, watch Youtube and edit videos I also author DVDs, compose music, practise music, mix tracks, edit audio, edit photo's, manage large catalouges of images, build websites, create and publish documents (as in desktop publishing), build servers, write letters, mail merge, create spreadsheets and play games. To buy the software to do all this on a wondows machine would cost me thousands and would need to be upgraded/replaced every 4 years as the built in redundancy makes it obsolete. My friend from where I sit it seems you've pitched your tent in the wrong camp.

As for the R Pi I can't wait to get hold of one and put it to the test.

BTW if you haven't got youtube to work it's probably because you don't have flash installed.

Tony writes:

> ... compose music, practise music, mix tracks, edit audio ...

I have lots of MIDI gear here, and one of the many (far too many) applications I'm planning for Raspberry Pi is a networked Soundfont player and synth to embed in one of my MIDI master keyboards.

It wouldn't surprise me if MIDI projects based on the Pi become quite popular.  Musicians rarely have much money, but $25-$35 could come out of a lucky weekend's busking.

I wouldn't describe myself as a musician I just dabble because the tools are are freely available, I make pleasant noises to run as background music but I see the use of a R Pi as a synth. Plug in your midi via usb through Jack and let something like Qsynth pipe out the audio BUT I need one to test it on although I'm sure it will work.

@Tony: That's how I play Soundfonts currently on my Intel multicore boxes, with Qsynth as the front end and fluidsynth as the backend doing the actual playing through Jack.  The kernel has to run in realtime mode though for Jack to work properly and not suffer audio overruns and poor MIDI response latency, which I forsee will be a problem with the much slower and single-core ARM of the Pi.  Realtime kernel is probably not the way to go on the Pi, as it barely works adequately on much beefier machines with multiple cores.

Instead, a better plan would be to integrate a dedicated DSP microcontroller (the STM32F4-Discovery board is a possible candidate) with the Pi at hardware level, and let each of them do what they're best at, the micro at DSP and realtime response and audio playback, and the Pi for high-level non-realtime duties and overall control.

Well we shall see what it can do once we actually get the devices. For myself I am not interested in projects that require bolting on additional hardware as the exciting thing for me about the R Pi is the low cost so if it can't do it then I'll shelve that idea and work on another.

Well that's the beauty of microcontrollers, they cost next to nothing --- the STM32F4-Discovery board costs under 10 pounds from Farnell UK, and in some countries they're giving them away free as promotion.

Also, the whole point of Raspberry Pi providing GPIOs, SPI, and I2C is so that people can interface other hardware to the board directly, without fear of destroying Dad's costly family PC.  Creating a generation of software engineers alone isn't enough.  The Pi provides those low-level hardware interfaces in order to spark interest in electronics too, so that hopefully we gain more hardware engineers and perhaps create more companies like ARM further down the road.

Of course it's not everybody's cup of tea, and I'm not saying that you should do it.  But the opportunity is there for those who are interested.  Also, that's the right way to handle realtime problems of this kind.

I wonder if it a coincedence that this months Elektor has begun a series in regard to a Linux Embedded board using the NXP Arm chips - not the same of course as the fruity Pi, but in a similar vein.

Point of the pi is, IMHO not the GPIO/SPI/I2C connections. The point is a cheap platform that is "indestructible" from a software point-of-view. This makes it possible for schools and parents to let their young children play with it.

If you want to play with SPI and stuff, get an arduino or http://www.bitwizard.nl/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=29

@Roger:  No.  People aren't going to stop playing with the Pi's GPIO/SPI/I2C just because you say so.

The point of the Pi is education.  If part of that point were not hardware education, then the board wouldn't provide any exposed GPIOs, SPI nor I2C at all.  Providing those connections added substantial design and layout pain and also added cost, and what's more it reduced the indestructibility of the board, so it was clearly done in answer to an important requirement or it would have been omitted.

It's pretty pointless to create a new generation of software engineers alone.  Someone has to create new hardware for their software to run on, and if you leave hardware expertise to other countries then you become subservient to them.

The Foundation has certainly done the right thing by trying to spark interest in hardware with this board, not only software.  Despite the low-level connections being limited, they are sufficient because more comprehensive hardware can easily be added externally.  And as I said earlier, that's the right way to do it except when your requirements are very minimal..

Morgaine.