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The part here about Risc / OS may be interesting :) Paul -------- Original Message --------
On 7 March 2012 13:49, Liam Proven <lproven@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 7 March 2012 13:38, Alan Pope <alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> On 07/03/12 13:33, Colin Law wrote: >>> Out of interest, in what way is it not open? >> >> It needs a binary blob for the GPU and to boot apparently. They also >> "only" licensed the h.264 and one other codec bundle from broadcom for >> that blob. So only certain video files will play back accelerated. So >> it wouldn't do for a FreeView set top box, but would be good for >> playing back pre-recorded/downloaded h.264 encoded video. > > Broadcom bought up the rump of what was Acorn Computers. Acorn > designed and developed the ARM chip. > > (Interestingly, after Acorn was split up and sold off, the rump > renamed itself "Element 14". This is now a trading name for Farnell, > one of the distribution partners for Rpi.) > > Broadcom still employs Sophie Wilson, who (back when she was called > Roger) designed the ARM chip, BBC BASIC and much of the BBC Micro. > > Rpi is basically a Broadcom GPU and video-decoder chip with a small, > basic ARM CPU added in one corner. It's a very proprietary device and > so are the Linux drivers. > > Something nobody is giving any attention to is that Linux is not the > only OS for Rpi. It will also come with Acorn RISC OS, meaning a full > networked multitasking Internet-capable GUI OS, complete with > optimised BBC BASIC interpreter with ARM assembler, GUI editor and so > on. Wow! Chuckie Egg! Best video game ever. > > Whereas it's a very low-spec system for Linux, it's a high-end one for > RISC OS. For beginners, RISC OS may be a much more appealing prospect. Not that low for Linux, I have linux on a machine with 12MB (12 Megabytes) of RAM and an SD card, operating as a 1-wire server for my weather station. It is a Linksys WRT54G router running OpenWRT. Running top via ssh I see it is using about half the RAM, including 1.3MB for top. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ |
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