Morrison: Linux loves Rasperry Pi
While I write this, in early January, we’re just weeks away for the release of what I think will be the most exciting product of 2012. In Linux terms, it could even be the most significant new platform since Google launched Android, and may be more influential on the future of computing. That product is the Raspberry Pi – a tiny self-contained ARM-based Linux PC that should cost somewhere between £20 and £30 (www.raspberrypi.org). The excitement surrounding its release is such that 10 beta versions of the board, which were put on eBay to generate some much-needed funds for the foundation behind the enterprise, are topping £2,100 at auction – and that’s with three days to go. A lot of us think the Pi is going to be big.
This excitement has a lot to do with the price. With such a low entry point, the Pi will hopefully allow almost anyone to own a computer and get online. All you have to do is plug in a screen (which can even be a TV), a USB keyboard, a mouse and network cable, and you’re ready to go. That’s a huge accomplishment, and potentially more effective than the initially over-ambitious One Laptop Per Child project, but as great as bringing computing to a new audience is, I think the Pi is more exciting as an educational tool. It should be seen, I think, as a brave attempt attempt to inject some first principles back into the world of ICT. Instead of vaporous concepts taught through the veil of proprietary software, the Pi could be used as a hands-on test-bed for experimentation, where users are free to hammer away at the hardware without fear of breaking either the equipment or their department’s budget.
David Braben, of Elite and Frontier fame, gave the project some early publicity by likening it to the home computing revolution of the 1980s, and in a nod to that original era, the two versions of the Pi are going to be dubbed the ‘A’ and ‘B’ in homage to both models of Acorn’s BBC microcomputers, which were used by Braben and Bell to build their magnum opus. That was a time when bedroom programmers could learn every nuance and side-effect of a piece of hardware with just a peek or a poke, and in doing so, equip themselves for the computer revolution.
Even high-level computing can benefit from some fundamental understanding, because you can never really escape from the world of bits and bytes, address spaces and stacks, no matter how hard you might try. Writing software without this knowledge will make your code less efficient, and in a world where online scalability is everything, those bits and bytes are still making a difference.
But education is only the start. I think the Raspberry Pi is set to become the PC equivalent to the Arduino, the open source micro-controller that’s now used in hundreds of homebrew projects, from SID chip synthesizers to building-sized projectors. The Pi has magnitudes more processing power and memory than the Arduino, and has the advantage of being a complete system that can be connected to a screen and tinkered with from within a known environment.
Add the possibility of a general purpose IO daughterboard, giving you all kinds of experimental connectivity, and there’s no reason why the Raspberry Pi can’t be at the centre of a tiny PC revolution. Best of all, that revolution will be running a completely open and modifiable operating system stack that can be coded at either a high or a low level. I’ve seen the high-level Qt stack running an accelerated particle system at a 1080p screen resolution, for example, straight off the hardware, and it looks amazing. At the other end of the scale, ARM ASM programming is a massive asset now that the majority of smartphones are running off the platform, and the Pi could be a one-step shop to embedded app deployment. If all this doesn’t fire up the collective imagination of a new generation of computer scientists, then I don’t know what would. Messing around with real hardware has surely got to be an improvement on sterile app development, where you’re forced to adhere to arcane APIs and the languages they support.
The Pi project is exactly the opposite. It epitomises free software because a project like this just wouldn’t be possible without the Linux stack and the dozens of utilities that come with it. Developers and tinkerers alike are going to be exposed to the fantastic free software community and the support system that comes from sharing your code with other people (although there’s no reason why your own code can’t be closed). What’s even better is that this inventive new platform is going to show Linux in its best light, as an open platform that’s supremely hackable, scalable and stable – the best choice for tinkering. Forget the wars for desktop dominance. Free software is winning where it counts.
Posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 11:20 am under Articles, Columns. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: Graham Morrison, Issue 318, programming
