"Raspberry Pi Foundation CEO Eben Upton recently said that the organization would move away from major product launches and focus more on software, as well as "doubling down" on its charitable work. "
That is unfortunate to hear. Their main contribution has been getting cheap hardware into the hands of more people. Why would they step away from this? Is it because its not possible to make it cheaper? Not possible to add more components like mic,speakers,better gpu? Not possible to get more performance? Software is important, but I would like to see them continue to release better hardware.
I try to test out every new edition of raspberry pi as a linux desktop replacement. Its not there yet, but I dream of the day when I can carry my whole computer in my pocket and be able to use it anywhere.
Sure, but not many have gobs of documentation, regularly updated OS distros, and a rabid community of coders, makers, educators, etc. That Raspi B you bought five years ago is still supported by the latest Raspbian releases. Not many other boards will have that kind of long-term support.
Until there's a (well adopted) common platform standard for these ARM-based boards, the Raspberry Pi Foundation must continue to develop their hardware. Unless... perhaps Eben and Co could work on that standard, and its adoption, as part of their goals.
The problem is that the entire ARM economy tends to have rather spotty support as a whole. There are mountains of proprietary peripherals baked into the chips, so you can't just pick and choose better supported options like you can on PCs with removable parts.
And while a chip manufacturer may make a handful of refreshes, most ARM platforms tend to only last a few years before being completely abandoned in favor of new ones. I am frankly amazed they can still get the BCM2835.
This is actually the key. From their website "The Raspberry Pi is a tiny and affordable computer that you can use to learn programming through fun, practical projects."
It's about learning programming through fun, practical projects. CoderDojo is a foundation that shares the same goal. RaspberryPi is essentially one way or tool used to promote learning to code.
With this merger, Ebon can get a better understanding of the struggles people have and perhaps create other ways to help people learn to code.
Eben has spoke of the hardware limits of the platform and the foundation has been putting a lot of effort into the software over the past year. Up until recently the software was not taking full advantage of the hardware.
The software has gotten a lot closer now, and work continues on optimizing and polishing it. With just a bit more work on that the Pi will meet the intended goals originally envisioned for it quite nicely. It's even fair to say it will exceed them.
A Pi3 actually does function quite nicely as a desktop PC right now. It runs Libre Office, plays YouTube videos, and the Chrome web browser filled most of the gaps that stood out in their Epiphany browser.
What you can do with it beyond that is pretty amazing so it really doesn't make a lot of sense for the foundation to be spending a lot of cash and effort to produce a more powerful hardware platform until something in that domain changes that makes that easy and cost effective.
Also, the foundation has been working on making their software (PIXEL) run on other hardware platforms (https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pixel-pc-mac/) so they are providing a hardware upgrade path with that route.
Finally, there are 3rd party hardware boards that are more powerful available that will run PIXEL now (http://www.banana-pi.org) and this might give them a boost in sales which would be a good thing.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 33.7 ms ] threadThat is unfortunate to hear. Their main contribution has been getting cheap hardware into the hands of more people. Why would they step away from this? Is it because its not possible to make it cheaper? Not possible to add more components like mic,speakers,better gpu? Not possible to get more performance? Software is important, but I would like to see them continue to release better hardware.
I try to test out every new edition of raspberry pi as a linux desktop replacement. Its not there yet, but I dream of the day when I can carry my whole computer in my pocket and be able to use it anywhere.
There's a lot more supply in the $35 SBC market than when they started.
Until there's a (well adopted) common platform standard for these ARM-based boards, the Raspberry Pi Foundation must continue to develop their hardware. Unless... perhaps Eben and Co could work on that standard, and its adoption, as part of their goals.
And while a chip manufacturer may make a handful of refreshes, most ARM platforms tend to only last a few years before being completely abandoned in favor of new ones. I am frankly amazed they can still get the BCM2835.
It's about learning programming through fun, practical projects. CoderDojo is a foundation that shares the same goal. RaspberryPi is essentially one way or tool used to promote learning to code.
With this merger, Ebon can get a better understanding of the struggles people have and perhaps create other ways to help people learn to code.
Have you tried the compute stick[1]?
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-stick/intel-c...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Fanless-Ubuntu-14-0-4-Comput...
plus a battery usb battery pack.
https://hackernoon.com/diy-kubernetes-cluster-with-x86-stick... used these to setup my own k8s cluster
The software has gotten a lot closer now, and work continues on optimizing and polishing it. With just a bit more work on that the Pi will meet the intended goals originally envisioned for it quite nicely. It's even fair to say it will exceed them.
A Pi3 actually does function quite nicely as a desktop PC right now. It runs Libre Office, plays YouTube videos, and the Chrome web browser filled most of the gaps that stood out in their Epiphany browser.
What you can do with it beyond that is pretty amazing so it really doesn't make a lot of sense for the foundation to be spending a lot of cash and effort to produce a more powerful hardware platform until something in that domain changes that makes that easy and cost effective.
Also, the foundation has been working on making their software (PIXEL) run on other hardware platforms (https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pixel-pc-mac/) so they are providing a hardware upgrade path with that route.
Finally, there are 3rd party hardware boards that are more powerful available that will run PIXEL now (http://www.banana-pi.org) and this might give them a boost in sales which would be a good thing.