tinker wrote:Well, the long awaited rpi is here, and I've spent half of father's day trying different distros. (This would normally be a good thing - when asked what I wanted for father's day, I could honestly say, just some peace and quiet and the opportunity to putter with computer hardware and software, and I got it!) But it's turned out to be frustrating. I've tried 3 things, and I don't have any of them in a really good state (although this message is being typed in Debian, so at least that's usable).
This is certainly a device that cries out for puppy linux. I'm a professional computer person who ought to be able to do the google-fiddle-fiddle-fix myself and eventually get there, but I guess I'm spoiled by the puppy world. I've used various puppies on my regular machines, Jemimah's puppeee and fluppy on various netbooks, and they JUST WORK. That's such a relief! I've done linux for a long time, I know that this is more like a beta device and not a consumer appliance, and I know it's early days, still, this is such a pain...
arch: got it to boot to a command line. Is there really no graphical desktop installed? I saw someone's instructions on installing Enlightenment - pages of installation and configuration - and decided to shelve that one.
raspbmc: found excellent (Windows) instructions on how to download and install the installer to an sd card, that all worked fine, and I ended up at the xbmc main screen. Not sure how it works, since I've never tried xbmc on any machine before - but I would be interested in using the pi sometimes as a way to get video or tv off the internet, so this looks promising. However, after a while it locks up with some usb-related errors that I haven't yet looked up on the internet.
debian: I needed to make half a dozen tweaks, but at least they were well documented, I can't get hdmi to work at all after many attempts at modifying /boot/config.txt, so I'm stuck with a max resolution of 678x460 (circa 1985), Also I can't get hexxeh's rpi-update to work, although I have tried all of the workarounds.
I think many many people will be dissapointed with the rasp pi in general simply because the desktop performance is jaw droppingly sluggish and because the software component of the package isnt fully working properly yet. No fully working software suite means no fully working rasp pi... and to tell the truth, the rasp pi will still dissapoint many many users even when the software is sorted out.
I have stressed the performance issue many times and i dont think people actually believe me until they try it for themselves.... However, i can understand this atleast partly because in the terms of general PC performance realms, a computer that can run Quake 3 at maximum resolution, would have no problem at all running a small linux distro and running internet applications, using a photo editing suite or an internet browser etc.
This ARM based system isnt capable of running firefox at a usable speed, and that will not change, even if puppy is ported to the rasp.
Try the following at the console before you start your x session:
apt-get update
apt-get install iceweasel
xinit iceweasel
This will install the debian version of firefox (called iceweasel for some strange oddity) and the xinit iceweasel line will run iceweasel with the absolute base desktop environment, no window manager and no desktop manager, just Xorg, and note that the version of the browser is very old, and newer versions of the browser are significantly more bloated and slower as far as ram and cpu usage goes. Anyone who has stuck with linux versions of firefox from say the 3 series up until the 11 or whatever it is now, will understand what i mean.
Once your using firefox in this manner, note that this is about as fast as it will ever run. Puppy is not so much faster that it is faster than debian with no trimmings at all. Puppy people can try this method to run programs, but most puppies simply wont work like this without alot of messing about. If this is too slow for you running firefox in this manner then you have an idea about the rasps ability to run full sized apps at a usable speed, or atleast popular modern desktop applications at a usable speed...
Porting puppy to the rasp wont magically make all the desktop applications people are used to run at the speed of a normal PC, it will require alot of learning and effort on the part of anyone using to discover ways to use the rasp in a fulfilling way, its certainly not something that will give the user instant gratification, its an educational device, and education means learning and learning requires patience that is unless you run quake on it, then its as pretty sweet, however sadly... even quake 3 doesnt seem to hold the attention of many people anymore.
i dont want to give people the wrong impression tho, just warn people as to the rasps performance so they dont get dissapointed.