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[Eddie Owens]

Some of the folks that read this board may be interested in knowing about a new computer that is being introduced into the education market, and should be available in numbers in December 2011.

It is called the Raspberry Pi, and you can read about it at www.raspberrypi.org.  It is open source and has been developed by a group at Cambridge University in England, whose concern is that there seems to be fewer people going into Computer Science,  and their goal is to provide a low-cost entry-level device in the educational system to try to get people interested in computing at an earlier age.

The Raspberry Pi (R-pi for short) is built around a BCM 2835 ARM 11 system on a chip running at 700 MHz; there are 128 or 256 MB of RAM; 2 USB 2.0 plugs; video output is composite or HDMI at 1080p; a full-sized SD card slot is included.  The computer is the size of a business card and comes in two configurations.  Board "A" has 128 MB of RAM and no ethernet port and is expected to cost $25.00, and board "B" will have 256 MB RAM and a 10/100 Ethernet port and cost $35.00!!!.

Google "Raspberry Pi", and there are several videos showing the video output which is pretty impressive.

The computer will boot into Linux, and right now it sounds like it will be Debian or Fedora, although others could be included.

Many people all over the world are excited about about this computer and plan a variety of projects.

I know that a number of people on this board are running Puppy Linux on their OLPCs, and it is interesting to note that the Puppy Linux folks are gearing up to port Puppy to the ARM architecture, and their goal is an ARM tablet running Puppy.

   http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PARM

   http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=72534&search_id=678092185

[Ricardo]

Thanks for sharing.  I live in Canada so it was really interesting to watch the HD video from Seneca.  Great idea and nice FAQ.  May be Santa will bring me a Raspberry Pi.