News - Raspberry Pi mini-PC launches this month for just £16

[Arthran]

let me expand the memory or other an enthusiast 1gb version and i'll be going squeee with excitement. As it is im just excited to order a B model asap

[crossy]

I _really_ wish this had some form of slightly faster storage onboard. I'd love something like this as a firewall/proxy/bastion server. I'm not sure it would cope with a basic Linux kernel and iSCSI in 256MB of RAM.

Not sure about the overhead of iSCSI, but I would have thought that the ARM port of FreeBSD would have been able to run in half that amount of memory. And there's always the ARM port of Debian - I'm sure I saw somewhere that this'd run in as little as 64MB, ah, just found it (at http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...h03s04.html.en)

Table 3.2. Recommended Minimum System Requirements

Install Type	RAM (minimal)	RAM (recommended)	Hard Drive
No desktop	64 megabytes	256 megabytes	1 gigabyte
With Desktop	128 megabytes	512 megabytes	5 gigabytes

Personally I would've preferred a 512MB RAM option (maybe a later "C" model perhaps?) on the board, but then again if they do an "advanced" model with this much memory, then it'd be nice to have (e)SATA too - but now I'm getting expensive.

[Nikumba]

Going to get one of these to replace my pc htpc especially as there is a XBMC build for it

[3dcandy]

excellent price...now what can I build?

[TheAnimus]

excellent price...now what can I build?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec

You are the creator the future deserves!

[kopite]

A lot of ppl in the thread seem to be getting away from the original purpose of the board which is a cheap educational computer.

It`d be nice to have extra ram, Sata ports, and the rest but the more you add the higher the price and before you know it its gone from being a super cheap educational thing to a small pc thats 100 quid..

[CampGareth]

If you're thinking 'this would be perfect with a bit more RAM, a case, SATA, etc.' then for one you should know that these guys were working to a price though they did pack as much hardware goodness in as they could.

Second you might want to look at the Cubox which is similar but more expensive. Quick tech run-down: 800Mhz ARMv7 single core (so you can run the latest versions of Ubuntu and so on), 1GB DDR3 RAM, 1080p hardware decoding with all the usual codecs, HDMI, eSATA 3gbps, built in infra-red. Price tag is 99 EUR plus shipping.

If you want even more grunt then there's the Pandaboard ES with its 1.2Ghz Cortex A9 dual core, 1GB of RAM, built in wifi/bluetooth and basically all you need bar SATA and a case. Price tag 182 USD.

If you want more portability then there's always the Toshiba AC100 which is no longer being sold but you can find it around for £145 from laptop refurbishment sites. Tegra 2 at 1Ghz, 512MB of RAM, some models have built in 3G. They've been made to run Ubuntu 11.10 quite successfully, or Android 4.0 so whatever you want you're catered for.

I've been looking into this for quite some time as I'm looking to replace my low power x86 systems like laptops/servers/general usage desktops. Decided on a first wave of RasPis then probably a cubox for a server, a pandaboard for a desktop and an AC100 for working while out and about.

[watercooled]

Unless you're wanting to run a full desktop environment and/or memory-hungry applications, 128/256MB is plenty for a Linux/BSD installation. Adding the capability to add RAM modules adds to the complexity and price of the board, so having a reasonable amount of soldered-on RAM is very understandable. However, I would have liked to see another Ethernet port so it could be put to use as a capable NAT router/firewall - the ALIX board I'm currently using manages fine with a 500MHz Geode CPU and 256MB RAM is more than enough (currently at ~10% usage). Again though, it's a minority requirement so the omission is understandable.

[Zeven]

I've been interested in this project for a few weeks now. Wouldn't quite know what to do with it apart from everyday tasks. If it can do those for 16£ then wow...

[simonpreston]

I can see this having many uses to me doing a computing course at university. Webserver, SQL server, Programming, Media centre..... the list goes on.

At that price I can't refuse it either. I don't need it... but it will certainly make a great toy to test things with and see how far I can push it.