Raspberry Pi a new retro-gaming behemoth?

[DPrinny]

Good to see they're out in the wild now. What's the waiting list like for orders now?

Ive been on there for months

Starting to give up on it

[QuantumCrayons]

Still on it, but it's been 3 weeks since I've had any word from the supplier; last I heard, it's still in a backlog.

[MikeFishcake]

So is there an alternative to this?, obviously nowhere near as small but is windows based?

Don't be scared! I had a similar conversation on the Pandora boards a couple of years ago saying I was scared of Linux.

After leaving the forum due to the furious ranting that involved, I decided to have a look at Ubuntu, and whilst it's not replaced my main OS by any means, it's a lot easier to use than I was expecting. I don't for one second claim to be an expert though.

I know Ubuntu is considered to be one of the most user-friendly* versions to use, but once you understand the concepts, it's not that difficult to get your head around.

Stick an order in for a Raspberry Pi, and in the several months it might take for you to receive it, have a play around with Ubuntu and see what you think. RPis are intended to be used for tinkering with, so why not take a nosey.

* Some Linux purists claim it's too user-friendly, but that's a discussion for another time.

[Zagrebo]

Apparently the manufacturers have had demand for the Pi far exceeding what they expected so there's quite a backlog. They're also keen to get them into schools, they seem to be looking at recreating the success of the BBC Micro as a standard schools computer but the Pi is so cheap they can afford one per pupil.

[Havantgottaclue]

Well, I have made a start using my Raspberry Pi. Debian Squeeze has already been updated by some clever developers to compensate for overscan on TVs. I may still have to edit configuration files to lower the resolution, because it autoselects 1920x1080 on my monitor, and I expect having a resolution that high doesn't help the performance. One of the main goals I think is to shove a load more XWindows tasks the GPU's way to improve performance - I'm sure that will help.

It may not be ready for everyday computing yet, but there are small victories which I'm very impressed by. After all, when I first used Linux I installed Red Hat 5, and it was quite an ordeal even getting XWindows up. I'm glad to say that getting RPi up and running is a lot simpler (not the least of this being that getting a graphical desktop is as simple as logging in and typing "startx"). I used Imagewriter in Ubuntu to copy the Debian Squeeze disc image to the SD card. The image is proportioned with 2Gb SD cards in mind, so I soon ran out of room for software and the whole thing crashed and I ended up recopying the image. So I installed GParted on my Ubuntu machine and resized the root partition, and I now have plenty of space for applications.

My wireless keyboard and mouse is running no problem, though I have had some problems with some keyboards and mice. Ethernet is configured without any input from me, and although I'm not keen on the default internet browser (Midori), it's easy enough to apt-get Chromium (first time around I downloaded the shoot-'em-up Chromium which, of course, doesn't work at all on the RPi yet).

I think this will be a hacker's tool for a while yet rather than being something of interest from a games perspective, so I'd suggest moving this thread to Off-Topic. That's if there's any mods around ... which there isn't. Oh well.

[sscott]

Well, I have made a start using my Raspberry Pi. Debian Squeeze has already been updated by some clever developers to compensate for overscan on TVs. I may still have to edit configuration files to lower the resolution, because it autoselects 1920x1080 on my monitor, and I expect having a resolution that high doesn't help the performance. One of the main goals I think is to shove a load more XWindows tasks the GPU's way to improve performance - I'm sure that will help.

It may not be ready for everyday computing yet, but there are small victories which I'm very impressed by. After all, when I first used Linux I installed Red Hat 5, and it was quite an ordeal even getting XWindows up. I'm glad to say that getting RPi up and running is a lot simpler (not the least of this being that getting a graphical desktop is as simple as logging in and typing "startx"). I used Imagewriter in Ubuntu to copy the Debian Squeeze disc image to the SD card. The image is proportioned with 2Gb SD cards in mind, so I soon ran out of room for software and the whole thing crashed and I ended up recopying the image. So I installed GParted on my Ubuntu machine and resized the root partition, and I now have plenty of space for applications.

My wireless keyboard and mouse is running no problem, though I have had some problems with some keyboards and mice. Ethernet is configured without any input from me, and although I'm not keen on the default internet browser (Midori), it's easy enough to apt-get Chromium (first time around I downloaded the shoot-'em-up Chromium which, of course, doesn't work at all on the RPi yet).

I think this will be a hacker's tool for a while yet rather than being something of interest from a games perspective, so I'd suggest moving this thread to Off-Topic. That's if there's any mods around ... which there isn't. Oh well.

If you don't mind me asking, how can you be @rsed to do all that? And to what end purpose?

[markopoloman]

It's all sounding ace - but complicated! I really want one though - I'll wait for you to do all the legwork first

Would love to get on of these running Mame/Speccy/C64 emus...........

[big-byte]

There is a great interview on BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17776666 (ZX Spectrums 30th anniversary)
The raspberry pi is mentioned in there and I completely agree with the interviewees that for it to become sucessfull in its main task (capturing the imagination of yet to be programmers) you need to be able to turn the thing on for the first time and write a simple program that makes it do something within 5 or 10 minutes at most.

[TMR]

If you don't mind me asking, how can you be @rsed to do all that? And to what end purpose?

The answer to both questions is "because it's fun" - some people go fishing at 5am of a Sunday morning, others support football teams like a religion, a few people see a shiny bit of electronics and just have to find out what happens when they prod at it. =-)

The first wave of RasPi owners was always meant to be early adopters who'd hammer away until they got the machine doing something they wanted (or until they decided on what they wanted in the first place) and the, when they have a community of actual users doing actual stuff, the next step is to wave that under the noses of the educational community pretty much as a ready made support network.

[joefish]

If you don't mind me asking, how can you be @rsed to do all that? And to what end purpose?

Asks the guy with Warhammer in his Gamertag...

[Havantgottaclue]

I really like tinkering around with operating systems. I have to admit that often I don't end up doing much that's constructive with them, I just like trying them out. Strangely I really like fiddling around with the system and getting it working, even when the end result is just something you'd have in a normal desktop environment anyway.

I feel a bit guilty about the fact that I managed to nab a RasPi when people who could've done more to help set things up are still waiting - luck of the draw I guess ... now I've got one I may try to get into something like Python so that I could contribute a demo or a little game of some kind.

[sscott]

If you don't mind me asking, how can you be @rsed to do all that? And to what end purpose?

Asks the guy with Warhammer in his Gamertag...

Oh no, irony free I'm afraid, play the board game/role play thing, never!

[IronMaidenRule]

I am still on the waiting list for one of these, the main appeal for me is to get my hands dirty with some Linux and Unix for a change, mainly a huge Microsoft fan and tinkered with different O/S on virtual machines and Apple Macs at work, but I need a constructive project and goal or else I get bored with it.

[TMR]

The raspberry pi is mentioned in there and I completely agree with the interviewees that for it to become sucessfull in its main task (capturing the imagination of yet to be programmers) you need to be able to turn the thing on for the first time and write a simple program that makes it do something within 5 or 10 minutes at most.

By the look of it, some headway is being made in that direction; the RasPi site has a post (my RSS reader just picked it up) asking for contributions from the community towards a computing for schools manual that'll appear on the desktop when the educational SD card (due in a couple of months, apparently) boots and they're going with Python 3 (with PyGame and similar "make stuff happen easier" extensions), Java and C/C++. i don't really know how easy picking one of those up to write code will be yet because i can't play myself to judge that, but they're also looking to ship that SD with Scratch, Greenfoot and GeoGebra, all of which are simpler to use languages which mix point-and-click with program logic or scripting.

Scratch in particular is the one people might've seen turning up in recent news reports where children have been sat in front of a RasPi to make their own programs - looking at the screenshots i can't see why a ten year old couldn't go from no knowledge to at least "hello world" in ten minutes from power on, so fingers crossed.

[MikeFishcake]

Thought I'd mentioned this already, but can't find it in here. Anyway, when I've finally got my house and stuff sorted, I'm planning on seeing if I can install a RasPi into an old Amiga 1200 case. I'd strip the insides out (aside from the keyboard), use a KeyRah ( http://www.vesalia.de/e_keyrah.htm ) to convert the keyboard into USB and use it as a little internet PC or something like that. Probably won't be for a while though.