undefined | Better HN

0 pointsTacticalCoder3y ago0 comments

> You can bitch about RPIs or you can go support something else.

I will and thanks for your comment... I'm pretty much Debian and Debian derivatives only so you convinced me.

I've got eight Pi I think. I started with the "Model 1" (which wasn't called that back then), on which I was running RasPBX (Raspbian with FreePBX+Asterisk) hooked to a SIP trunk to power four Cisco VoIP phone at my wife's little SME. Worked flawlessly for years. My best one I'd say is in the vintage arcade cab, with a Pi2JAMMA hat bigger than the Pi (!). I've got three towered on my desk, two of them operational 24/7.

So early adopter and user as it gets, not the kind to let the Pi not powered up... But I think this headline and the troubles getting one convinced me and I'm done with that brand.

I'll order BeagleBoards now and run Debian on them.

0 comments

bsder3y ago

Sorry I came across a bit salty. However, I've been banging on about this for ages.

The RPi foundation has been subsidizing board cost since practically the beginning. This is nice in that it puts boards in everybody's hands.

This is bad in that it sucks the oxygen out of the space since anybody who doesn't have a benefactor willing to throw cash to subsidize the cost gets pushed to the side. Then, when the money finally dries up (and it will always dry up), the space immediately becomes a barren wasteland because everybody else got driven off.

It's doubly bad since mere mortals couldn't actually get their hands on the SoC chip at the heart of the boards. So, nobody else could take over when the RPi foundation decided to bail out.

Which is where we are now.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse