Linked by Howard Fosdick on Tue 13th Nov 2012 06:13 UTC
The Raspberry Pi has inspired a flock of competitors. Among them are the A13-OLinuXino, which you can purchase here for 45 euros. It comes with an A13 Cortex A8 processor at 1GHz, 3D Mali400 GPU, 512 MB RAM, and complete set of ports. Video is VGA. It ships Android 4.0 but also runs various Linux distros. You might also check out the $49US Cubieboard here and the UG802 for $89US here. And there's the MK802 micro-PC, a USB-sized device priced at $74US that runs Android 4.0, Ubuntu, Debian, and other distros. The tiny single-board computer has come of age.
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RE: Low-footprint, low-power "revolution"
by pepa on Tue 13th Nov 2012 16:02
in reply to "Low-footprint, low-power "revolution""
Member since:2005-07-08
RE[2]: Low-footprint, low-power "revolution"
by WereCatf on Tue 13th Nov 2012 16:40
in reply to "RE: Low-footprint, low-power "revolution""
Member since:2006-02-15
But it's perfect for a headless file/email/printserver! The Cubie has SATA, whoohoo!! I would want a case around my Cubie that's more than a screwed-on piece of plexy glass...
IMHO the Cubie seems the most well-rounded box of the ones mentioned here, partly exactly because it sports a real SATA-port. That alone gives it a nice performance-boost and increases its capabilities. I also like the fact that there are SPD/IF headers on the board for digital audio. According to their QA the system will also support real suspend and resume under Linux.
RE: Low-footprint, low-power "revolution"
by Kaj-de-Vos on Tue 13th Nov 2012 16:30
in reply to "Low-footprint, low-power "revolution""
Member since:2010-06-09
RE[2]: Low-footprint, low-power "revolution"
by Neolander on Wed 14th Nov 2012 12:07
in reply to "RE: Low-footprint, low-power "revolution""
Member since:2010-03-08
Wow, now THAT's big news! There definitely should be an article about this on OSnews, if there hasn't been one already.
RE: Low-footprint, low-power "revolution"
by DeepThought on Wed 14th Nov 2012 08:14
in reply to "Low-footprint, low-power "revolution""
Member since:2010-07-17
I personally heartily welcome this trend of small, hacker-friendly, ...
hacker-friendly? Most if not all of these devices are missing JTAG/Debug connectors. At least in standard pin-out. So if you want to replace the Linux on these boards by an RTOS to leverage the CPU you are quiet lost.
RE[2]: Low-footprint, low-power "revolution"
by WereCatf on Wed 14th Nov 2012 08:16
in reply to "RE: Low-footprint, low-power "revolution""
Member since:2006-02-15
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/13/13 14:35 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/11/13 17:07 UTC
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/10/13 23:13 UTC
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/08/13 14:57 UTC
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/07/13 11:40 UTC
This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/04/13 12:45 UTC
Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
Linked by nfeske on 05/31/13 10:12 UTC
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/29/13 16:59 UTC
At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!More Features »
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I personally heartily welcome this trend of small, hacker-friendly, low-footprint and low-power computers. These are great for exploring and studying internals of computers and their software, especially since it's not expensive to get a replacement even if you manage to totally botch something and end up with a broken device. Since these devices also take very little space, don't require active cooling, and generally consume very little power one can go wild with all kinds of home automation systems on these. Or how about running some small servers for your family, like e.g. your own e-mail server? A web-server so your kids can practice web-development and actually put their websites out there to wow their friends with? (I know I would've loved that back when I was 10!) Best of all, since these boxes are small and totally silent your boyfriend won't get his panties in a twist every time you take the box out to play with!
There are a few issues, however, and the biggest one of them is drivers: at the moment I am not aware of any of these things actually shipping with a GPU that is fully supported by open-source drivers. The closed binaries that I've had to deal with are often either partially or completely broken, and sometimes even the closed ones are still missing features. Having to rely on closed binaries wouldn't be such a bad thing if they atleast were functional and kept up-to-date, but my Pandaboard is a rather good example of what these things can be at worst: on some versions H/W acceleration of decoding or encoding stuff doesn't work, sometimes X acceleration doesn't work, audio output from the analog connectors doesn't work, or like with the latest updates networking got broken and the board goes into a hard lock-up after 1 to 10 minutes!
My point with the above ramble is that fancy specs and lots of promises don't actually guarantee that you get what you think you're paying for, and at the moment you can still really only count on the basics to work, thereby greatly limiting the potential of these little beasts and making them somewhat unstable for any sort of educational work.