Dedicated raspi apt-get repository?

[mrbill]

Does one exist?

I"m thinking - particularly for education, an optional closed ecosystem of applications known and tweaked to work with e Pi would be welcome.

Any comments?

[rmm200]

I am thinking that is exactly what we don't want...

The ability to get whatever package you want from the Debian ecosystem is part of the appeal.

Maybe my design course needs something not thought of by this central repository - then what?

[mrbill]

You can still do that - but remember this is an educational tool. Downloading stuff only to find it doesn"t work, or is outside the capabilities of te Pi could well sour the Pi experience.

I"m not suggesting restricting to a pi repository ala-Apple, but rather having a raspi tested and approved one which would be used by default on non-power user and educational/classroom distros.

[Tass]

I like the idea.  Don't tie the OS in to this repository, but provide a sub-set to make life a little easier for everyone trying to figure out what has or hasn't been tested - as the OP suggested, specifically for educational/classroom environments

[mahjongg]

Indeed, it perfectly possible to have multiple repositories, one especially for the raspi another for generic (ARM)debian stuff.

[Jim Manley]

We need to remember who the primary intended audience is for the Pi and, while we look forward to some users becoming advanced enough to be able to seek out source and adapt it to the Pi, there will be many more who will need as much help as can be provided in the form of recommended, curated, known-to-work, off-the-shelf, executable software for the Pi.

The plan is for the Linux releases to include Pi-compatible branches (at least Debian is committed, AIUI), but, that will still leave a lot of other software which won't be included in the official branches.  We shouldn't expect that people will have to learn tools like aptitude and git right off the bat, especially teachers and parents who are going to be a big part of the Pi support network.  Of course, kids will pick up on them quickly enough, if we get to them before they become fat, lazy, solely consumers of sealed-package technology.  Once such kids become the majority, we can stop worrying so much about providing recommended, curated, known-to-work, off-the-shelf, executable software for the Pi.

[louisb]

Looks like there will be a dedicated version of Debian tailored to work with the raspberry pi called Raspian that should run faster as well see:

http://www.raspbian.org/

http://elinux.org/Raspbian

It is very early days as all the packages are being recompiled to take advantage of the pi hardware floating point unit. Hopefully Mike will provide some custom Pi packages as well.