Re: Raspberry Pi

Am 07.02.2012 19:54, schrieb Reuben Thomas:
> On 7 February 2012 18:51, Hans-Martin Mosner <hmm@...> wrote:
>> Apart from that, I too think that the Raspberry Pi will be a nice platform for experimentation and
learning, especially
>> since the complete operating system and all other software is on exchangeable compact flash storage,
which could mean
>> that users could have separate SD cards for Scratch, Python, Frank, media center software, etc.
> I'm baffled as to how having separate storage for different components
> helps. Could you explain? I'd've thought it would be easier to use if
> they were all available at the same time.
>
> (A similar point was made earlier in the thread about OS
> experimentation; again, how is that better than using VMs?)
>
VMs are of course more versatile, but the little ARM SoC will probably not support VMs too well. In addition,
there is a
certain "geek" quality in knowing that your OS is running on the "bare metal" and not inside some emulator 
The reason I hope that separate media encourages experimentation is that you're much less likely to brick
your device,
either by your own actions or by some innocently-looking upgrade. I know that on my Ubuntu desktop, I've
been bitten by
incompatible OS upgrades several times, which meant that I had to revisit software that was working
perfectly well
before such an upgrade just to make it runnable again.
Whether it really work out that way remains to be seen - I am not totally sure that it will, but I see it as a possibility.
In any case, you could attach an USB disk with a conventional OS install and have everything together. This
might even
be the preferred mode of operation if you switch between media playing, internet and programming.