[dominicgs]

This is anecdotal evidence from my own experience, so take it with a pinch of salt. I work on an open hardware project[1], I believe that we lose a significant portion of users (~50%) at each step deeper in to the development process. It seems that the steps are along the lines of: binaries - source releases - code from GitHub - updating firmware - compiling firmware - debugging hardware.

I think it would be useful to have a Virtualbox image available with everything set up for cross compiling for the Pi, BBB, etc. The thought of setting up non-standard toolchains seems to put off a lot of users.

I've also been working on a project[2] involving the BeagleBone Black and I saw a sharp increase in users when I began distributing an OS image with everything pre-installed.

[1] https://github.com/greatscottgadgets/ubertooth [2] https://github.com/dominicgs/USBProxy

[joezydeco]

I'm surprised it hasn't been done already. Wasn't the RPi supposed to be an "educational" product, or is this just a case of "shut up and give my my toys already"?

[leoc]

The whole intention of the Pi as an educational tool was to provide a clean-slate platform where users could experiment without worrying about breaking things on their OS install or having to sludge through layers of virtualisation, build systems and compiler configs before doing any programming for the target system. If what you're suggesting is that RasPi users in this original target group ought to be plumbing together virtualised cross-compilation for their Pi with their own hands, that would defeat the purpose.

Of course not everyone who wants to play with early versions of the new Q3A port falls in that category. But the fact that the Rasbpian developers themselves have steered clear of x86->RasPi cross-compilation suggests that it's not necessarily straightforward even for experienced people.

[joezydeco]

"We want to break the paradigm where without spending hundreds of pounds on a PC, families can’t use the internet. We want owning a truly personal computer to be normal for children, and we’re looking forward to what the future has in store"

That's from RPi's mission statement. It's on their website.

RPi had nothing to do with being a cheap Linux platform for hardware hackers and people who wanted a cheap XBMC or MAME box. But now it's 99% that.

[leoc]

"RPi had nothing to do with being a cheap Linux platform for hardware hackers and people who wanted a cheap XBMC or MAME box."

Indeed; I didn't suggest otherwise. Mind you, getting families on the Internet for $50 or $300 wasn't really in the original mission either:

"The idea behind a tiny and cheap computer for kids came in 2006, when Eben Upton, Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft, based at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, became concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skills levels of the A Level students applying to read Computer Science. From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were coming to interview as experienced hobbyist programmers, the landscape in the 2000s was very different; a typical applicant might only have done a little web design.

Something had changed the way kids were interacting with computers. A number of problems were identified: the colonisation of the ICT curriculum with lessons on using Word and Excel, or writing webpages; the end of the dot-com boom; and the rise of the home PC and games console to replace the Amigas, BBC Micros, Spectrum ZX and Commodore 64 machines that people of an earlier generation learned to program on.

There isn’t much any small group of people can do to address problems like an inadequate school curriculum or the end of a financial bubble. But we felt that we could try to do something about the situation where computers had become so expensive and arcane that programming experimentation on them had to be forbidden by parents; and to find a platform that, like those old home computers, could boot into a programming environment. From 2006 to 2008, we designed several versions of what has now become the Raspberry Pi; you can see one of the earliest prototypes here."

http://www.raspberrypi.org/about

It was meant to be a direct, hands-on programming environment with nothing valuable to break for programming beginners, thus David Braben and all the BBC Micro nostalgia.

[joezydeco]

Well, then I'm glad we're all busy porting Quake to this device instead of all the noble things you listed above.

[caf]

The point wasn't to port Quake (it already ran on the device), the point was to port the recently open-sourced BCM21553 graphics driver to run on the Pi's VideoCore IV. Getting Quake III running on the resulting stack was just the defined endpoint.

[slashdotaccount]

I hope your OS image is GPL compliant.