3 Days in and having fun

[bigsi111]

Okay, I've had my Raspi for 3 days now and have some initial impressions/thoughts.

It worked straight out of the box with Debian on 8GB SD Card (Kingston Tech - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-Flash- ... 862&sr=8-1) which I'd repartioned to use the whole 8GB.

The initial Debian Image was put on the SD Card using the Win32 Disk Imager and then used GParted (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/) written to CD so that on Booting my PC Gparted started from the get go.

Very simple and this You Tube link really helped me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DztSRaFyaVE

In keeping with a £25 board, I've decided to spend the least amount possible on peripherals, so it was down to Tesco for a £5 Keyboard and a whopping £3.50 for an optical mouse from Amazon including delivery.

Power is via my Samsung SII Micro Charger which works very well.

Using the HDMI input to TV works although I'm going to play with the config settings as I can't get sound. (http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Sound)

I've also noticed that the Midori is rather (ahem) pants, so it's time to make use of Chromium (http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =26&t=6664)

What is wonderful though is that my 12 year old daughter and 8 year old son have both written their first computer programs in Python with just a little help from their dad.

My son has mastered "Hello World" and my daughter using input asks the user's name and then wishes them a lovely day.

Now I know we could have done this easily on my exisiting kit, but the PC, Laptop etc., isn't "cute" and the Raspi is as it sits in it's homemade lego box house.

So the Development board is serving it's purpose in two ways, it's getting an old fart who hasn't played with kits for years back into things and much more importanty two kids have started programing.

[nick.mccloud]

So the Development board is serving it's purpose in two ways, it's getting an old fart who hasn't played with kits for years back into things and much more importanty two kids have started programing.

Excellent, this is what it's all about!

[samwho]

Really awesome to hear that the RPi is getting educational use already

[bigsi111]

@ Sam & Nick

I'm rather pleased that my children are interested in the Pi, although the Xbox and Sims are still No1, it does show that the basic premise is correct: children are inquisitive.

Now a quick question: I have Chromium loaded as my browser, but the CPU usage is still maxing out even as I type this reply. Is there anything to be done to rectify this or is this something for the "A" board release?

I've updated all software using apt-get update.

[nick.mccloud]

Now a quick question: I have Chromium loaded as my browser, but the CPU usage is still maxing out even as I type this reply. Is there anything to be done to rectify this or is this something for the "A" board release?

Until we get accelerated X using the GPU pretty much any of the chunky bits of software (and Chromium is definitely in that catagory) is going drain the CPU. Watch this space.

[bigsi111]

Now a quick question: I have Chromium loaded as my browser, but the CPU usage is still maxing out even as I type this reply. Is there anything to be done to rectify this or is this something for the "A" board release?

Until we get accelerated X using the GPU pretty much any of the chunky bits of software (and Chromium is definitely in that catagory) is going drain the CPU. Watch this space.

That was my thought as well.

Once the GPU issue is resolved this will put some of the "this machine ain't a full spec PC" brigade back in their boxes.

[tawalker]

I haven't even had the courage to install Chromium yet I'm running Arch/ARM on my Pi, with a "stripped-down" X setup (Fluxbox window manager), with Midori as the browser, and still I find the machine effectively freezes up for a minute or more, each time I load anything but the simplest of pages.

Perhaps I should give uzbl a try Seriously, I wish I could help the folk developing an accelerated X display driver for the Pi, as it'll make a world of difference to what we can do with this little fella...

[bredman]

I've updated all software using apt-get update.

Please note that this command only updates the LIST of available software. To actually change any software you need to enter the command
sudo apt-get upgrade

[bigsi111]

I've updated all software using apt-get update.

Please note that this command only updates the LIST of available software. To actually change any software you need to enter the command
sudo apt-get upgrade

Thank you! This is why I love the forum - us Linux newbies get confused!

[bigsi111]

I haven't even had the courage to install Chromium yet I'm running Arch/ARM on my Pi, with a "stripped-down" X setup (Fluxbox window manager), with Midori as the browser, and still I find the machine effectively freezes up for a minute or more, each time I load anything but the simplest of pages.

Perhaps I should give uzbl a try Seriously, I wish I could help the folk developing an accelerated X display driver for the Pi, as it'll make a world of difference to what we can do with this little fella...

I like your set up - I'll burn a fresh SD card and try out with uzbl.

The beauty of portable operating systems

[tawalker]

I haven't even had the courage to install Chromium yet I'm running Arch/ARM on my Pi, with a "stripped-down" X setup (Fluxbox window manager), with Midori as the browser, and still I find the machine effectively freezes up for a minute or more, each time I load anything but the simplest of pages.

Perhaps I should give uzbl a try Seriously, I wish I could help the folk developing an accelerated X display driver for the Pi, as it'll make a world of difference to what we can do with this little fella...

I like your set up - I'll burn a fresh SD card and try out with uzbl.

The beauty of portable operating systems

I admit I'm in two minds about uzbl - it looks so minimalist, it's almost scary! That said, I'm up for a challenge, so may give it a whirl anyway

Whilst Fluxbox is my favourite WM as a general rule (I like its looks, customisability and speed, to name but three), I'm looking at trying awesome as an alternative on the Pi. It's partly the tiling approach to application windows (rather than the more familiar "stacking/floating") that interests me, but more practically, I've heard awesome is very light on system resources.

Not sure if awesome is significantly less "weighty" than Fluxbox already is, but the Pi demands some serious economies when it comes to what you run on it, so I'm up for trying it out...