Puppi Raspberry Pi Hardware

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sickgut · #316 Post by **sickgut** » Mon 14 May 2012, 08:08

Hey lobster...

what are your impressions of the rasp?
is the performance better or worse than what you where expecting?

im interested in what your expectations for the rasp where and also in what ways did the rasp meet your expectations or dissapoint you in various ways...

I am interested in what you thing about the rasp because you seem to be a knowledgeable power user that uses normal desktop computing and i respect your opinions.

also how hot does the board get? do you think it would work ok in a non ventilated small space?

people buying the rasp know its a low performance computer, but they have expectations, and i intend to make an OS that will impress, and maybe exceed their expectations initially and focus on what the rasp can do very well rather than normal computing and things the rasp cant do very well. We need to initially hold peoples attention and not dissapoint them. My experience with OS hopping, first impressions are everything. I intend to make a showcase of the blissful awesomeness of what the rasp pi can do, like on the first boot it will run a demo that shows off the rasps abilities.

Sylvander · #317 Post by **Sylvander** » Mon 14 May 2012, 09:25

I'm interested in using the Raspberry_Pi connected to my 32-inch Sony Smart TV, using the TV as a monitor, and doing such stuff as browsing the web, and streaming movies to the TV.

Right now...
The smart TV can stream stuff straight from the web [e.g. LoveFilm & BBC_iPlayer], but...
It is limited in what it can do.
e.g. It doesn't browse the web, doesn't include NetFlix.
No wired/wireless mouse and keyboard supported.

Lobster · #318 Post by **Lobster** » Tue 15 May 2012, 05:04

Guys,
My Arm experience is based on three devices, the Wii, a cheap Andoid phone and the iPad. These devices are complete and polished devices.
The raspberry pi is not like that.
The rpi boots up fast, the hardware seems robust. The small size is impressive. The development tools and programming is in place.
The operating systems seem at Alpha stage, with some program's very robust and others not working.
This is a learning and project involvement tool. As such it's potential is all in place.
The speed of the rpi became an issue for me very early on.
It is slow.
When I set up the Debian to be Puppi like, the system was more responsive and this can be tweaked further. Rpi needs puppy know how. No doubt.
The innovation that will come from the Rpi will be incredible. That is because of the large user base.
The team at Rpi are smart cookies. I can imagine a faster board. Perhaps a multi-CPU component . . .
To be involved in something that is this phenomenal, at such an early stage is great.
I can not code on the wii, the android smartphone or the iPad.
I can already on the rpi. The Rpi foundation are focussing on learning packs.
What fun.

sickgut · #319 Post by **sickgut** » Tue 15 May 2012, 20:40

Lobster wrote:Guys,
My Arm experience is based on three devices, the Wii, a cheap Andoid phone and the iPad. These devices are complete and polished devices.
The raspberry pi is not like that.
The rpi boots up fast, the hardware seems robust. The small size is impressive. The development tools and programming is in place.
The operating systems seem at Alpha stage, with some program's very robust and others not working.
This is a learning and project involvement tool. As such it's potential is all in place.
The speed of the rpi became an issue for me very early on.
It is slow.
When I set up the Debian to be Puppi like, the system was more responsive and this can be tweaked further. Rpi needs puppy know how. No doubt.
The innovation that will come from the Rpi will be incredible. That is because of the large user base.
The team at Rpi are smart cookies. I can imagine a faster board. Perhaps a multi-CPU component . . .
To be involved in something that is this phenomenal, at such an early stage is great.
I can not code on the wii, the android smartphone or the iPad.
I can already on the rpi. The Rpi foundation are focussing on learning packs.
What fun.

it seems with better and better and faster PC hardware coming out all the time, that software developers get lazy and create bloated and resource intensive applications and games etc and dont worry about slimming or how much ram or cpu they use because it runs fine on their particularly newish computer... and everyone owns a computer that is only 2 years old max right?

I personally think that working within a restrictive hardware environment forces programmers to make more efficient applications. And i see the rasp pi as a positive force to influence a new influx of efficient applications, coded by people using restrictive hardware. I believe the rasp pi is powerful enough to do most things, but the software isnt efficient enough, and i believe that eventually the OS and other software will be tweaked and made more efficient to the point of it being a usable desktop experience. As for as gaming goes its already adequate, and as a server its fine as already. Its strange to deal with a hardware model that can play Quake 3 at the highest settings but cant run firefox or load gimp at a reasonable speed, this goes against everything that the intel/ i386/ x86 based PC's do, for ARM based rasp pi with its powerful gpu it seems as far as performance goes, everything is backwards.

is the GPU in the Rasp Pi actually more powerful than the CPU? I wonder if its possible to tap the GPU processing power, like modern supercomputer/ clusters do?

sickgut · #320 Post by **sickgut** » Tue 15 May 2012, 21:56

The Rasp Pi, being rather power efficient could easily run off of solar power.I think when my rasp pi arrives ill experiment with this. Now to find an energy efficient monitor...... however if its being used as a server it wont need a monitor.

solar power rasp pi could be placed outside with a protective casing and attached to a webcam and transmit the video stream using wireless technology and or save to the SD card.

greengeek · #321 Post by **greengeek** » Wed 16 May 2012, 06:07

sickgut wrote:The Rasp Pi, being rather power efficient could easily run off of solar power

Sickgut - Do you think it would be practical to run the Pi in a solar powered home as a "wireless file hub", so that I could attach a large usb disk to the Pi, and access the files on the Pi usb disk wirelessly from other PCs in the home?
And do you think that the Pi software could be set up to "self boot" so that when the solar panels start to supply power I would allow the power through to the Pi, and the Pi would boot up and commence wireless connection without user intervention? ie: the Pi would act as an automatic daytime NAS?

Lobster · #322 Post by **Lobster** » Wed 16 May 2012, 08:46

Heat:
The Arm does not have a heat-sink. Always seems cool to the touch and is under-clocked (I think I am right on that).

It will work from solar power.

Regarding code efficiency:
It is an issue in Puppy.
Puppy will load and reside in memory. So there will be no 12 second and then 3 second load (load from cache on the second load) because effectively Puppy is already in the memory cache - at all times.

A rather interesting idea is server + XenDesktop
to farm out Windows (a widely known legacy operating system) to a bunch of cheap Raspberry terminals.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1222

antiloquax · #323 Post by **antiloquax** » Wed 16 May 2012, 18:33

Just got an email from RS and I have ordered my Pi. Still may have 3 weeks to wait

rhadon · #324 Post by **rhadon** » Wed 23 May 2012, 16:55

I got it

Wow, a feeling like x-mas when I was a child!

Creating a sd card with debian was easy. First boot, works

. Then I played a little bit with the menu, trying to find out, what is what

.

OK, sound doesn't work (I remember I've read about that and also about a solution) and there's nothing with video. More and more I'm stumbling about the root password. What is it?? I'm searching for this damned word for more than two hours. Nothing. I'm sure that I also read about it but I find nothing. Very frustrating. Now I remember why I left Debian and Suse some years ago.

With heart and soul I can say "I want my Puppy"

Without it, it will be a hard way

Rolf

Lobster · #325 Post by **Lobster** » Thu 24 May 2012, 09:13

Step 2 will give you Debian passwords
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppi

. . . it is like Christmas . . .

More questions answered here
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppySchoolRaspberryPi

the most I have got out of it (sound is not a priority) is a tone
forget where the link is for that . . .

You are now at the cutting edge . . . we don't yet have a
Puppi (just the Debian modifications) - I recommend Chrome usage instead of Midori as the most useful . . .

http://raspberrypy.tumblr.com/

I am trying to compile Vala (in Slacko) - it might be better to do it directly on the Rpi - so far have got 'hello world' almost working
This page I created needs improving
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/ValaGenieintro

What are your plans?

. . . actually talking of Christmas . . .
here is a talk between Catholic Priest and Scientist, Father George Coyne and the Spaghetti Monster Messiah, His Divine Darwini, Richard Dawkins

http://youtu.be/po0ZMfkSNxc
. . . quite long in 7 parts . . .

Here are some alternatives to the Rpi coming out . . .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18163419

Puppy Linux
Christmas every day

antiloquax · #326 Post by **antiloquax** » Thu 24 May 2012, 16:10

Your page on Genie & Vala is great.
I have compiled Vala on Arch Arm. I don't know if it would work under Debian.
Vala ARM

User: a3804781
Pwd: puppi1

greengeek · #327 Post by **greengeek** » Thu 24 May 2012, 17:28

I think it would be quite useful to have a Pi set up as a PXE server on a LAN. That way the Pi wouldn't need to have a screen or keyboard attached - it would just sit there and have a few isos loaded in storage and make them available to any other PC that was looking to boot from LAN.

rhadon · #328 Post by **rhadon** » Sun 27 May 2012, 06:55

Hi Lobster,

sorry for answering so late.

Lobster wrote:Step 2 will give you Debian passwords

Well, this wasn't my question, I was asking for root password.
OK, I found the answer. I've forgotten, that there is no root password at the beginning and I have to create one.

Thanks for the links, I haven't known all. Btw. for me it looks like there are too many of them, mainly with the same content.

My plans, to survive

. To be more serious, the last and the next time I have a lot of work in my real live. Also my situation in my living room isn't optimal, the TV is fixed at the wall and the distance to the place with my laptops is too far to read anything. So I'm sitting in front of the TV, balancing the keyboard on one knee and the Eee on the other

. Damned uncomfortable. Also my 17" Gericom refuses more and more to work

. Using the 10" Eee for all isn't funny too.

I've bought a 2nd SD card, now I can easily change between Debian and Arch. Yeah, both are not Puppy

and it will take time to be more familiar with them. Your JWM and Rox is a good start. Of course I'm curious and willing to test more. I think the software thread is a better place to post about that.

Greetings
Rolf

#329 Post by **JohnMurga** » Tue 29 May 2012, 04:15

My Rasp arrived yesterday ...

Hopefully I'll get play with it at the weekend

antiloquax · #330 Post by **antiloquax** » Tue 29 May 2012, 14:02

Excellent!

#331 Post by **JohnMurga** » Tue 29 May 2012, 17:34

OK ...

I could not stop myself, and played with it today.

Used the tweaked debain build here :
http://www.raspbian.org/PiscesImages

Everything I did on the command line was pretty OK ...
Everything in X seemed pretty slow.

I just realized that the old USB charger I was using for power was very under-powered (600Ma).
I am hoping that could have something to do with the lackluster performance.

But right now it makes a good wireless terminal on my TV

Managed to install and use Synaptic/wicd/Midori and a few others without any problems ...
Even watched some choppy HTML5 video on YouTube.

Cheers
JohnM

Lobster · #332 Post by **Lobster** » Sun 03 Jun 2012, 09:57

From Barrys blog

RasPi coming soon
I received the paperwork from Element14, dated 29 June, which probably means that my Raspberry Pi was posted also. Tomorrow (Monday) is a public holiday here, so I am expecting the parcel to arrive on Tuesday.

When it does arrive, I will most likely switch over to working intensely on porting Puppy to it.

http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02858

Good news. I would much rather have a BarryK alpha build than the existing 'maturing' offerings

BarryK · #333 Post by **BarryK** » Sun 03 Jun 2012, 10:13

A high priority is for someone with knowledge of C coding -- and it would be helpful to have a bit of GTK coding knowledge too -- and figure out why gtkdialog is rendering the widgets in reverse order.

There is probably some simple thing in the source where it flips the rendering order.

sickgut · #334 Post by **sickgut** » Mon 04 Jun 2012, 13:51

JohnMurga wrote:OK ...

I could not stop myself, and played with it today.

Used the tweaked debain build here :
http://www.raspbian.org/PiscesImages

Everything I did on the command line was pretty OK ...
Everything in X seemed pretty slow.

I just realized that the old USB charger I was using for power was very under-powered (600Ma).
I am hoping that could have something to do with the lackluster performance.

But right now it makes a good wireless terminal on my TV

Managed to install and use Synaptic/wicd/Midori and a few others without any problems ...
Even watched some choppy HTML5 video on YouTube.

Cheers
JohnM

this is what i was pretty much expecting as far as performance goes.
excellent commandline type usage, and or server applications with no X session running.

im planning on setting up games on the rasp using: xinit openarena
type command to run the game without loading all the WM stuff first. And the games being on their own sd card, so the user swaps cards to change games, just like a nintendo DS.

There is something interesting here:

Puppy is a desktop OS.... websurfing, playing youtubes, running gimp..... etc....

However this is the weakness of the Rasp Pi, it isnt suited to run a desktop environment. Puppy is about the last thing you would want to run on the rasp pi, well atleast the Puppy we are familiar with.

This is why im am planning to create a command line driven OS for the Rasp, with games running without the WM stuff, and if you select a application that needs a WM then and only then it would be loaded, and and when you exit the application, the WM exists too..

i think it is doable with a propperly setup text menu system.

puppy_apprentice · #335 Post by **puppy_apprentice** » Mon 04 Jun 2012, 19:14

the idea to prepare RPi to run games without X is good - if u achieve the same like with quake it will be nice cheap game machine

btw. i've heard that RPi creators are working on driver to use GPU for X, now everything for X is doing only CPU, i hope when they release drivers RPi will be much better as desktop

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