Getting ready for launch: kernel sources on GitHub

Following Raspberry Pi user on GitHub and also the kernel repo. Awesome work guys, congratulations!

Ta muchly.

grabbing now (and putting them into a “decent” scm :) )

I’m cloning it right now too :)

SCCS?

Will the .patch files be released as well? Or just in the form of the kernel tree?

We hope someone in the community will generate the patch files!

Here’s a quick attempt, it patches a vanilla 3.1.9 kernel without error ( it errors on 3.2 ), and the result compiles:

https://github.com/simoncadman/Raspberry-Pi-Kernel-Patch/

Hi liz,

I don’t mean to come across as rude in asking this, I was just wondering; for the time it takes to create these patches why would the Raspberry Pi team not just release them? Considering they already exist in one form or another, why jump through hoops?

Thank you and the rest of the Raspberry Pi team regardless.

The work that they are doing is probably going to be updated a bunch, especially since they are in the middle of cleaning it up. git has commands to push things places, but i dont think it has a pushpatchtowebsite command :)
Well, maybe it does, i’ve only used scm tools to pull down data.

It’s not jumping through hoops. Git repositories are a awesome way of distributing work, but patches simply aren’t: As soon as you start changing the code more, merging those new changes becomes a tedious chore, one that can be solved so much more easily by Git.

Plus, GitHub makes it really easy and transparent to accept changes by the community. Otherwise you’d have to create a platform yourself, maybe even go with one of those awful user-unfriendly mailinglists and sending around actual patch files.

Plus, generating the patches is as easy as running `git format-patch master..rpi-patches`: http://www.mediafire.com/?uulgfx3gko33icg

[Mod : comment removed – plain rude. If you have something to say, try to be polite]

I suspect all the pi guys ever had is a repo with their changes. With a modern source control system that handles merging well this can be a perfectly reasonable way to handle a customised version of a program

Eventually someone will have to take the kernel work, clean it up to meet upstream coding standards and turn it into patches suitable for pushing upstream but that will take time and is probablly a relatively low priority task.

Exactly what about this is “jumping through hoops”.

Maintaining their own git branch until they’re ready to be merged with Linus’ tree is perfectly fine and is in fact standard Kernel workflow.

Quiet in the peanut gallery, please!

I’ve created a patch:
http://www.cnx-software.com/patch/r-pi_linux_3.1.9.patch.gz

Great that the Linux kernel is the latest and greatest. I’ve had to work with embedded platforms before where the drivers were based on an ancient kernel version, ang there was nothing that we could do about it. This is very promising! Absolutely great, looking forward to buying one (or two, three, …).

I’ll grab one for hacking for sure, maybe another to create some media system (or use XMBC) and plug it into my television. A third one would be great for general stuff.

I’m so excited to get one! haha

I would love to have one from the first batch as well :) It would be the perfect birthday-present for myself :D

Fantastic stuff How is your $25 price holding up ? Maybe FedX or UPs or some airline would be willing to donate shipping space to move RBPI around to the various parts of the world. 99guspuppet

No problems at all with the price, although we’re not making any of the $25 units in this batch – the first set will all be Model Bs.

Just waiting to be able to order one :)

Really great work. I plan to buy at least 2 ones. One for my Home-Control project which I start after my Lightning Desk Projekt (As mentioned on my Blog) and one for Playing around with.
It is REALLY GREAT WORK! I thought I have to write a TCP-IP-HTML Stack für ATMega32, but now, that processor just needs to send the sensor data via I2C oder USART to the rPI and the OnBoard Linux is doing all the work for me!
I Cannot say it enough REALLY GREAT JOB!

it’s killing me……
Awesome work, i shall have a look in a min

I can almost taste the Raspberry Pi…. :)

Yeah, me too. I hope I can get one from the first batch and get it shipped to Brazil :)

Has this been submitted upstream? Will it be coming through the staging tree or ARM tree? What did the upstream linux community say about those patches? For example, why do you need 64bit division library in the kernel? Will you port to 3.2.1 soon?

These patches do not conform to the kernel coding guidelines because we haven’t had time yet; we intend that we (or someone in the community) will push them upstream in due course.

Be cautious of how this is marketed. People have been hearing $25. If they see $35 without knowing the details, they’ll say bad things. I’d hate to see any kind of broad negativity about the foundation come out of that.

Ok, either I’m a dolt, or the software is misplacing my comments. Probably the former.

The Raspi foundation has been saying there are two models that are $25 and $35 for a very long time. I don’t think there will be an issue, since anyone complaining about the $35 model will make a fool of themselves. ;)

Yeah looking forward to getting one so I can show it to people esp young people I know, can also take in to after school club I work at :)

Paul

Wow, so excited about this thing.
I’ve converted all the nerds in my company and we’re so anxious for the release – and the “normal” guys are just groaning whenever someone mentions the Raspberry :-)

Btw:
What about commercial use? I’m considering using the Raspberry (provided it works as intended) for a larger project (series >2k, potentially >10k) in a year or two and my tentative budget would def. allow some kind of buy-one-donate-one-policy..
I’d love if you could get me back on this.

Be cautious of how this is marketed. People have been hearing $25. If they see $35 without knowing the details, they’ll say bad things. I’d hate to see any kind of broad negativity about the foundation come out of that.

I can already see the stupid newspaper headlines like “The $25 PC is on sale, but you have to pay $35 for it” :)
Never mind. The people, who want to spread negativity will always find some reason. It’s the positive movement around that will silent them.

External reports always latch onto the $25 pricepoint, but the Foundation have always made it VERY clear that there are two models, the Model A being $25, the Model B at $35. That journalists of all stripes are incapable of telling a straight story but have to sensationalise at all costs is sad but true.

The prices, and capabilities, of the two versions of Raspberry Pi have always been made crystal clear on this forum/website and there should be no room for confusion.

I can see your PoV in the sense that the initial batch will all be Model B, but this batch has always been intended for the hobbyist/experimenter community. The “mass market” systems (cased and with support) will be available from mid 2012, at the latest estimate, and there will be no room for misunderstanding on price/capability at THAT point!

Ahem. Don’t tar us all with the same brush – I’ve always chiefly referred to the $35 unit. C.

Wait a sec — The first batch aren’t cased?

I wasn’t expecting much support, but I was hoping to get some cased ones to give away. :-(

So what’s the ETA on the cased ones? :-)

Er, no. They are not cased. And never have been.

We hope to sell cases mid year, when the educational stuff gets going.

Who needs a case when you have Lego?

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/547

China is manufacturing them. I’m willing to bet they’ll have cheap cases on ebay within weeks.

How long before we can purchase a B unit?

The latest info we have is ebens interview with /. which suggests they will release in early feburary if nothing goes wrong.

I want to send a comment

I want to reply.

I want to comment.
I want to reply.
I want to buy … a Raspbery Pi!

What I saw till now you need to be some sort of Computer Engineer to operate the pi.

Eh?

Its a Linux system. Its ALWAYS been a Linux system. It says so at the top of the page. :-) You need the same sort of “computer engineering” skill to use a Pi as you need to use Windows, or a Mac, Or an Android Tablet, or an iOS device, or…….

Well, you get my drift?

Don’t get confused by the hobbyists and developers who delight in complexity and talk in hex.

I never saw something simple being done with the pi, just a bunch of wires, a bunch of white text on a black screen then all of a sudden something appears. Can we see something for the average users, just a normal boot up, go to a web browser, a spread sheet, some flash based applications.

Maybe because the Raspi is all about learning? How about people wait till it’s out, buy one and start experimenting. The Raspi is not intendet to be a Out-of-the-Box piece of hardware. It’s for learning an teaching.

If I understand it right, you will not be able to use flash on these, and I belive thatthe XBMC demonstration shows very low level of complexity(looks like something even my 72yo grandma could use). You should be able to use some interfaces, but as I’m no Linux user(yet), I dont fully know which they are.

Jeff, I’m a Linux user myself, but I do understand you and I do agree with you.

And I really hope the RasPi will run a webbrowser fast enough to make it usable; I have the feeling the current demo’s “black-and-white screen show a super fast video” is less hardware demanding than a webbrowser; the video is handled by the video processor. And AFAIK a webbrowser needs a lot of RAM and quite some CPU…

I know that linux by itself its not an OS. (correct me if I am wrong). I saw a video on youtube the pi with debian OS. So I guess it can run a web browser?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28CqDKjtppg

You guess it can run a web browser? Good guessing or poor trolling… Of course it can run a browser and of course it isn’t “white text om black background”.

Well, seeing as I installed Arch on a P3 with 256 mb ram and a Voodoo 5 graphics card during Software Freedom Day last year, and it handled low quality youtube vids just fine on Chromium I would guess that the Rpi would do as well , if not better.

And here I thought the RasPi was intended to teach kids (of all ages, I hope) how to really use a computer, not just how to surf the internet (go to web browser), watch videos on YT (flash) or do something basic in Word/Excel (spread sheets).

Once people have R-Pi in their hands I am sure we we will see a massive amount of stuff appearing showing simple and more complex things, and probably some things that are “fantastic” or simply “WOW”

I like the RasPi and I like the video demos, but I wonder about the the CPU power and especially the amount of RAM: is that enough for Linux + X + web browser?
I’ve got a Atom netbook with 1GB RAM running Ubuntu, and that’s not fast but OK.
I’ve got an Android phone with a 528 MHz CPU and 384 MB RAM, and that’s OK for a phone with a small screen.
The RasPi has less RAM than my phone and a bit better CPU specs . So I’m really looking forward to a youtube clip showing the RasPi browsing the Web …

@Sander
Quote: “I wonder about the CPU power and especially the amount of RAM: is that enough for Linux + X + web browser?
I’ve got a Atom netbook with 1GB RAM running Ubuntu, and that’s not fast but OK.”

That is because Ubuntu is bloatware like hell.
Run something like the LXDE desktop, and you system will use a lot less memory.

I have testet Enlighentment E17 to use 77 MB after boot had finished.
Enlighentment (E17) comes with the Bodhi Linux distro: http://www.bodhilinux.com/index.php

I know that Jeff (head developer of Bodhi Linux) is interested in create a Bodhi Linux for Raspberry Pi.

The main purpose of the Raspberry Pi is to learn about computers, electronics,… so hacking everything is part of the fun !
I don’t think the main purpose is to replace your good old computer to do everything you do with it.

@Lars T. Hansen —– I totally agree with you. Ubuntu is a slow OS. I have an Asus eee PC1001 netbook (windows 7) and installed ubuntu on a new formatted drive just for fun. It worked really really slow which was impossible to operate.

Yes, that’s what it looks like when engineers are developing something new. The end product will be a lot simpler to use.

For novices, getting a Pi with an SD card pre-flahsed with Ubuntu running will be a piece of piss. From there on, the learning curve is the same for any Linux system.

The Pi was not made for the average user… If I’m not mistaken the goal is to help (young) people learn and tinker.

I’m not saying you won’t be able to run a web browser or a spreadsheet on it though. Debian LXDE on my Atom netbook takes only 62MB of RAM at boot and you should be able to run Midori on it decently I guess.

I don’t think Adobe makes Flash for ARM though. It would be slow anyway.

“I don’t think Adobe makes Flash for ARM though. It would be slow anyway.”

Erm…where have you been? :-p Android has Adobe Flash support via ARM. (hope you’re not using an iphone). Although, I think the support is for a newer/different ARM specification than the one Pi has :(

So it can run LXDE and run a browser, right now it’s not all that impressive because the browser doesn’t use _any_ of the hardware acceleration (i.e. OpenGL) or any other the other things we could do to make it better… Maybe that’s one for the user….

That’s already been shown. Several times. The Raspi has been shown to run a regular desktop (LXDE), run a browser (Midori and Chrome), play games (Quake 3), play movies (XBMC)… Maybe you just haven’t been looking hard enough.

However, this IS an educational device. The entire purpose is that you get to understand how to use the white text black screen thing. People will actually be able to use their computers better because they understand them better. It doesn’t take an engineer to understand even the terminal.

[mod removed]

to the layman: no longer can remember half the ascii table.
never did for the “extended” part thou

[mod removed]

I’m going to start deleting these if people continue to post then. They are of no interest.

[Mod removed comment – I did warn you, now they have all disappeared in to the ether]

Jeff, it’s not for you.

Don’t buy one. Please!

Now, see that “X” on the top right of the window? Yup! That’s the one. Click on that. There’s a good chap ;)

Such a looser.

Know thyself Jeff!

Looser?!?

Ugh, I must be homophonophobic, but that is not a hate crime yet.

Jeff… From what I have read on this site.. Although a pre-build Linux distro (BTW you are wrong as Linux is an OS!) for the R-Pi will be available, you will be required to do a little work to get it onto an SD card to begin with. Later you will be able to buy the SD cards from the shop. Even then you will require some computer know-how, so if you don’t have even the slightest idea or urge to learn something to get things going, then as davidb24v says “it’s not for you”.
This is all about learning something about computers, so if you don’t have the knowledge and are unwilling to learn I would seriously reconsider purchasing one, until people more willing to try things have tinkered with the first batches and come up with stuff to make things easier for complete novices.

Linux is a kernel. An OS includes all the libraries and userland programs and utilities. People often refer to Linux as an OS but really it’s a Linux kernel plus a gnu userland.

Command line interfaces can look pretty daunting but you won’t need to deal with that. You’ll probably see it for a second while your OS is loading but once that’s done you’ll have the same kind of pointy-clicky experience you’re used to.

To all those on here that are already moaning about what they perceive Raspberry Pi as not being able to do, can I just point out a few things:
1. For $35 it can do some very, very, VERY amazing things.
2. By the team’s own admission they are looking to the community to help build up the experience for users so that it can go into schools and be used by children.
3. It costs $35!!!
4. Perhaps we should wait till we get our hands on it before we start any kind of dialogue about improvements we would like to see. The likelihood is that someone with the right skills will agree with you and will already be working on a solution.
5. IT COSTS $35!!!!!

If you want a device you can switch on and browse the internet with completely hassle free, buy an iPad.

May I just add…
6. IT COSTS $35.00!!!!!!!!
If you want to argue about whether Linuxis or is not an OS, or that The RasPi might not be able to run a web browser, or ……

Do the rest of us a favour and DON’T BUY ONE!

> I know that linux by itself its not an OS. (correct me if I am wrong).

You are wrong. Linux absolutely is an OS.

Actually… Linux is the kernel not the os. The os GNU, saying “linux” is just the short form for GNU/Linux.

In computer science, the kernel is the operating system. The package of the kernel with a userland, whether that’s GNU or Android, or busybox or something else, is a ‘distribution’ – a product suitable for a particular purpose.

Don’t confuse the marketing term OS with the computer term OS. Like ‘hacker’ or ‘theory’ these terms are co-opted by media to mean something completely different.

Nope. Neither is linux a kernel, nor is it an OS.

LINUX IS A DRUG. Don’t ever start, or you might get addicted to it ;)

~LDer~

Well, the FAQ says “Debian, Fedora and ArchLinux will be supported”. I guess they have implemented the graphics card driver for X11 already, which means you can use it with KDE, Gnome, or maybe some less resource hungry window managager, like the good old FVWM. And then you can just surf the internet, play games etc., like with a fast tablet PC.

Which kind of patches did you apply to the kernel (drivers I guess)? Are they necessary or will Raspberry Pi work with the vanilla kernel as well?

I’ve made an 800KB tarball with the patches in it – basic knowledge of Git goes a long way. Downloading that plus the official kernel sources will be easier and quicker for most people than a git clone.

Any particular place I shuld put it?

How about on the wiki page I created? http://elinux.org/Rpi_kernel_compilation

Chromatix, can you share the git commands you used to make the patches? I think a few people would enjoy filling the gaps in their git knowledge (e.g. my knowledge of git is close to nil).

Cheers,

Will the sources to the kernel bootloader be available any time soon? Between that and the linux sources, that should be enough to make at least some progress on BSD ports even if Bcom doesn’t release documents for the ARM core part of the 2708.

Please notify me when the product becomes available for sale

Hopefully you have signed up for the mailing list

We shall hope the production process goes without flaws..

the great value of the Raspberry Pi is its community. This will become (and is) apparent from day one . I can’t wait to see the ingenious hardware/software hacks and the infinite possibilities of the single-board-computer! I mean beagleboard hacking is fun, but with the lower entry price of Raspberry, there will hopefully be more daredevils and experimenters

[…] Pi has just announced the release of a fork a linux kernel 3.1.9. The source code (including patches) is available at […]

It’ll probably take some work optimizing it, but I’m sure web browsing is more than possible.

A lot of computer systems nowadays are filled with bloatware and such that look pretty but bog a computer down. I’ve made a hobby out of squeezing every last ounce of power out of “ancient” computers with Linux. While they can’t handle high-tech games and flashy GUIs, they certainly can do everything that a modern computer needs to do. Where power ends, creativity begins, and the solutions presented therein are quite interesting.

Quite frankly, I can’t wait to get my hands on the Raspberry Pi and see computers become creative outlets once again.

(for reference, my computer is a 1Ghz single core Celeron running 172MB RAM)

192?

Can you post your .config?

(CAN YOU FIX THE STUPID COMMENT PASSWORD THINGY? I do things as directed and end up losing the comment I wrote after I get a “password wrong, press back and try again”. I get the rasberrypi.org homepage when I press back, and an empty commentform without the comment I had just typed when I then press “forward”. This is NOT the first time this happens. )

Error 1: Click back and type in the password.

I’m missing a “mach/gpio.h” did you forget to git add this file?

I always copy the message on the clipboard before posting. Its very normal to receive this error. By the way also the mailing list have some errors. I tried to subscribe but never was successful.

Is there any collaboration with LINARO ? .. or will this kernel cause more fragmentation in the ARM implementations?

I went ahead and tried to compile the kernel. I’ve started a
kernel compilation page on the wiki: http://elinux.org/Rpi_kernel_compilation

– I get some undefined symbols.
– I Have a missing “mach/gpio.h” file….

so I don’t get a kernel yet.

It is in github:
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/blob/rpi-patches/arch/arm/mach-bcm2708/include/mach/gpio.h

Do you have that file on your local disk?

I do, it seems I had selected the wrong Broadcom processor.

Hello,
good job!
As an old hobbieist I highly appreciate a reasonable system for setting up different toys and tools based on a regulary Linux OS.
I would appreciate to support the community with some projects I put togehter, well documented stuff (nfs-based enviroment, Web Control, PWM, I2c, … -> robotics).
To set up an development enviroment (and help beginners) I would highly appreciate to see raspberry pi in an buildroot enviroment.
It would make things easier for all the beginners to set up and run a cross compile system.
Is there an idea to generate the Makefiles and defconfigs für buildroot?
Or should I take the opportunity to help you creating them?
An answer would be highly appreciated.
Greetings from germany.
Rupert

Wouldn’t compiling code on the unit itself be easier than some sort of cross compile on a different computer? Probably slow, but easier.

Hi,
I dont think so.
From the perspective of the evaluation it performes best for me to have a (strong) meta engine for the compilation, documentation and backup of the files developed (I dislike to crash my works by not booting anymore).

To develop and compile on a raspbery itself means to setup a full blown system for that job.
In my opinion it is better to start with a minimal linux system, where you put just the programs you need (-> egg you wanna build a balancing robot, a flight control, a cnc control and/or so on).
I find it very useful to seperate the development stuff from the filesystem (and programs) you wanna build.
(Example: I prefer a mix of ubuntu desktop and shell for develpoing and I dont want a desktop on raspbery)
My favorite solution is a embedded device which is booting and running on an nfs share of the development computer (mostly laptop on ubuntu).
It reduces development time dramatically (in my projects till now). For that purpose buildroot is very fine because you automatically download all the sources you need, apply the necessary patches, compile the bins from file system (programs you like), configure the file system, configure the kernel, pack everything and move it to the nfs share.
I like that
cu
rupert

Absolutely – but as you say very slow (10 minute build on my desktop (twin core Athlon II x2, 4GB) = 5 hr build on Raspi)

In general that’s the bottom line, native compiling will be easier but slower than cross-compiling

Cross compiling is often tricky for several reasons. Firstly you have to actually get the cross-toolchain setup correctly. Secondly the build systems for a lot of software simply aren’t designed to handle it, it’s not so bad if you are just building your own software but trying to mod someone elses build system to support cross-compiling can be a PITA. You also can’t really run build time tests when cross building.

Debian builds everything natively and I can tell you that even with far better hardware than the pi some stuff takes an excruciatingly long time to build on arm due to ram shortages., For example the build of webkit for armhf sid took 58:57:36 on an imx53 quickstart (with 1GB of ram).

Hi,
your right, cross compiling is a tricky thing!
To simplify that you can use …. : buildroot!
cu in net
Rupert

I have ordered the raspi, and will try to have an basic linuxbased embedded OS ready (made with buildroot) by the time i get it.

i have used a lot from this guide: http://raspi.springnote.com/pages/8235788 which covers configuring the kernel and setting up qemu for emulating the processor and a few peripherals.

currently my buildroot config gives me a system that runs in qemu (have not seen which peripherals are emulated).

if it works when i get the raspi and none provides it before me, i will try to post the buildroot config and script to prepare a bootable SD-card with it. that should make it quick for beginners to setup a basic OS, although maybe not complete with all drivers

Looks good, however it looks like you guys need a script to remove all those unnecessary drivers (nouveau, etc.)

Those are normal Linux drivers — they should not be removed from RPi’s git-repo! You don’t want to completely fork the Linux kernel, do you? Instead, just don’t build stuff like nouveau. The configs for RPi dont include it either.

What size should my USB or SDHC card be? I have a 4 GB SDHC card… Is this enough for Linux? I have a 1TB harddisk for storage :)

I’ve used 4GB no problem. My first ever HD was 200MB…

Mine was 20MB :-)

Mine was 20MB too! I originally ordered a 10MB hard drive ($1100 in the late 1980s), but they were so back-ordered that by the time they shipped they sent a 20MB unit. I thought I’d never have enough to fill 20MB! Who needs that kind of space? :)

I’ve still got a multi-user CP/M system with a massive 5MB HDD. And I mean massive in terms of size and weight. But the baby still runs just fine!

Mine was 512k or maybe 364k… its so long ago that I can hardly remember..

My first HD was 20Mb, which I upgraded to 30Mb by moving it from the MFM controller to the RLL controller…. Back then the harddisk geometry numbers were compiled into the Minix kernel.

So after moving the data to the new physical bit-format I still had only 20Mb: The drive was only using the first 17 out of the 26 on each cylinder….

So I hacked the kernel to support 17 sectors per cylinder on one device and 26 sectors per cylinder on an alias of that same device…. Next a “dd if= of=

It then takes some courage to hit enter on that commandline…. :-) But it worked fine. :-) Those were the days.

hehehe, yeah back in the day my first hdd also had 20 mb… using dos mind you… so i partitioned it to a normal 10 mb partition and a partition compressed with drivespace so i had all in all *drumroll* an unbelievable amount of 30MB!!!!!!! of hdd. i was the king :-P
funny also that on this machine the 1mb of ram was upgraded to 3 mb of ram using a isa-slot-card… strange thing that *g*

I bought 1Mb extra RAM for my Amiga. The money I paid would now get me 100Gb of RAM.

My question was: will the linux OS fit on my 4gb SD card. Yes I think?

Yes. No need to think.

When will the first preorder be available in the shop? I really can’t wait to get my hands on one of these beauties!

no pre-orders – soon they will be ready to order

Man… how do we preorder?

Now that I know it can be used as a media player, I think I’ll buy three!!!

I’d love to know that too, you guys rock!

Only one major problem… initial orders are limited to one per person :-)

who says that? I mean wherer did you get that information from? cant find any statement.
Greetings,
Benedikt

@JamesH, i help you:

READ THE FAQ!!!!

:D

Good news for home users. BAD News for the target (education); Linux is completed for the Pi before Risc OS :-(

And Linux isn’t for education? But yes i think its not good that they posted so much multimedia function videos. So the first 10k will go to people who want a cheap multimedia server or something like that and the developer of new software or the kids will get none.

Nothing wrong with Linux as an educational OS. RiscOS may be better, or not.

Isn’t RISC OS a side project anyway? Note the top of this website says “An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25”, not “A RISC OS box for $25″…

Honestly, even as a former RISC OS user, I’m more excited about running Linux on this than RISC OS (other than novelty, I don’t have any plans for running RISC OS).

(Also, note it’s RISC OS, not RiscOS, there’s a difference, and the RISC OS pedants will throw things at you if you get it wrong..)

Throw away, I have a thick skin with regard to OS pedants!

Heh, I couldn’t care less either, but the RISC OS pedants tend to get very uppity. It was more a warning than a complaint! :)

The irony there is that Acorn called their high-end workstation a Risc PC, running RISC OS. Nothing like throwing a little extra confusion into the mix! :)

Now I just need a low cost eye gaze system. Any help with that would be great.

Am looking forward to playing

Even if the first 3 full production runs are quickly sold to people wanting cheap multimedia devices, the raspberry foundation will be continually producing the pi and able to increase product runs because of each successful sell out. I’m sure enough of us “hobbyists” will manage to get one, keep reading and contributing to the forums, it’s going to get real busy in the coming months….side note, I’m here multiple times a day refreshing the sales page ready to purchase my first “B”.

I don’t trust the refresh function of my web browser, so I keep closing the shop page then reopening it in a new tab from the main one… just in case.

ctrl-F5

Lol, ta! You learn something new every day!

Why does the pi even need its own kernel? I was planning on installing ttylinux, but from what I’ve read I’m going to have to put the kernel in a Fat-frickin’-32 partition.

Correct. The first partition on the SD card needs to be FAT so it’s easy to put data on it from a Windows PC (amongst other reasons)

If we will be loading from a Linux or Mac computer, will this be any different? or is it even possible to do so?

Depends if the computer you are using supports FAT32 – most do in order to support SD cards and USB sticks which use it.

The fact that it *requires* a fat32 partition means that it has a proprietary bootloader. Will GRUB work? What about kernel development?

Yes, it does have a proprietary bootloader. Nio idea if GRUB would work, no one has ever tried it.

What about kernel development? What is your question?

This is very disappointing :(

from FAQ: “For the first batch we are limiting orders to one per person”
that means me and my brother living two blocks away have to order two packages with one RasPI and we have to pay 2x shipping? that sucks…

For the first batch(es) they want to get boards out to as many people as possible. Nothing stopping you or your brother from waiting to order them, infact i encourage it as im a slow typer and i really want one asap ;)

Sorry. Needed to prevent Ebay scalpers and to get a good spread of devices across the community.

Excellent Idea. Whilst I would probably order a handful (all for my own projects), I could probably get by with one, develop on that, and wait for the next batches to fill the burning desire to have raspi’s everywhere!

What about order from outside the UK? The shipping cost will probably be about 10EUR inside the EU. Are we also limited to one RPi per order?

Yes.

If the plan is still to post them using standard mail, then since a 250g package (56g + generous packaging) sent to Europe by standard airmail costs £2.50, and one to the UK costs £1.72, it won’t really make much difference. Shipping to a random Polynesian island I tried is £4 (or £2.30 by sea).

But there are other shipping costs — the packaging and the labour.

Good. Now we need the boards… WANT THEM SOOOO BAD!!!!!!

Hi,
your right, cross compiling is a tricky thing!
To simplify that you can use …. : buildroot!
cu in net
Rupert

come on…should it be version 3.14?

Now we just need CEC support in the kernel for the Raspberry Pi & XBMC

CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) for HDMI will enable XBMC running on Raspberry Pi to control your television and receiver on/off/volume, as well as letting you controlling XBMC via your televisions remote control without a dedicated media center remote

libCEC is the open source library by Pulse-Eight that XBMC uses for CEC
https://github.com/Pulse-Eight/libcec

libCEC needs the following dependencies in order to work correctly:
* udev v151 or later
* cdc-acm support compiled into the kernel or available as module

Seems to be good progress on this – updates are in the forum
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/features-and-requests/hdmi-cec-and-xbmc/

Urrahhh… that was what I was waiting for… =)

I’m so so impatient for the first batch of R-Pis. When it will be finally back from the factory? (just rhetorical question ;-)) I want to touch it and program it! :-D

Just heard of this project and I love the idea. I’ll be picking up 2 of these at least to try out. Words are spreading fast keep up the good work!

I think the pi will be a good learning device as an embedded board for appliances.

[…] sale to the public, we thought we’d give you a quick update on their progress. As stated in this post on the Raspberry Pi blog, the linux kernel that the Raspberry Pi team is deploying version 3.1.9 […]

I freely admit that I’m more of a BSD guy when it comes to experience with compiling kernels, but I’m ready and willing to learn here. I’m also a software engineer by trade, but wouldn’t even know where to start on the trek to getting code that doesn’t compile to work when dealing with kernel code. It seems that no matter what I do, I can’t get this kernel to build properly, and welcome any help anyone can offer.

A couple of issues I ran into:
– Can’t even begin to guess about the 90,000 configuration options. I honestly tried to follow the kernel write-up (README) with its advice like “don’t skip this step” related to “make config”. Once in the config I got a boatload of questions I couldn’t properly answer. Is there a default config I’m missing somewhere that eliminates the need to guess on how to configure it?
– How do I convince it to build the code for an ARM chip? I ended up accepting the defaults for all the configurations, and I’m pretty sure that put me on the path to building for x86. That’s obviously not going to do me any good.
– My most successful attempts to compile it made it well into the compile and died with an error related to “quirks2” not being a valid member of a struct and an undefined function.

I welcome any tips and secrets and advice. Thanks in advance.

As mentioned earlier there is a wiki at http://elinux.org/Rpi_kernel_compilation which explains how to compile the kernel. I’ve took the liberty to expand the article, so now it should work fine as described. At least it does for me on a Gentoo machine.

I got the kernel to compile by using this wiki and ubuntu also – just had to do one minor change for creating a symbolic link to the 4.6 binary (which i added to the wiki) … my next problem is that i have setup eclipse and cdt, i can now cross compile for armv7 … but i believe the chipset on the RPi is arm11? … in anycase will try and figure out what switch i need to make it compile for arm11 …

Don’t get confused by CPU and instruction set. The CPU is an arm11, however the instruction set is armv6.
So invoking gcc with “-march=armv6 -mcpu=arm1176jzf-s” should work fine. But, since I (like most one else) have no pi yet, I couldn’t test it.

ah ha, thanks – that seems to be working, also been working on getting libfreenect (for kinect) compiled for arm ….

libfreenect.so.0.1.2: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, not stripped

looks like its practically there … just need to get an RPI now to test this stuff out =D

Thanks for the wiki link.

As for the “earlier” bit, I never saw it because when I grabbed the git there were 2 replies to this news post.

#1. Don’t use make config – it is unfriendly, ancient, and should only be used by a script or as a last resort. Use make menuconfig instead, it is vastly superior and makes it a ton easier to navigate the various option trees. If you’re looking for an option and you don’t know where it is, it’s a ton easier to poke around in menuconfig.

If you’ve got X running you can use xconfig, but I don’t personally think it has any advantages over menuconfig.

However, I have never configured one for any non-x86 or AMD64, so I don’t have any more specific advice about the failing compiles.

To be clear I merely left out which version of config I ran because the goal of all of them is the same. I actually did use menuconfig, but that didn’t mean I had any better ideas about how to set it up.

Would be nice to get support for this in something like OpenWRT rather then just the desktop distro’s.
I know it’s not a router / wifi device (unless you add a USB one), but distro’s like OpenWRT I’ve found to be better for embedded devices with limited resources.

I just want to comment to newbies, novices and beginners. Don’t be afraid of all this chat about Kernels, GitHub, Patches and such. Some of you might read this and think ‘Oh my! I’m in way over my head with this stuff, I won’t bother getting a Raspberry Pi. because it seems complicated.’

Just wait for the step-by-step beginners guide/tutorials to arrive.

The work these guys are doing now will help to make your experience a more pleasant one – more stable and generally easier for you to get things running properly.

Hey where and when are these likely to be available to buy?

loving the sound of it and cant wait to get 1

Hello and greetings from Bavaria Germany !
Is there any information when the Raspberry Pi will be available in germany ?

Thx

Well… all of us are very anxious for launch of raspb… I’m sorry saying this but i’m getting very FRUSTRATED with this launch, It seems to me that raspb team is taking too long to make it available… like a market campaign… and all market campaigns that take too long to put the product in the market make the spectator’s frustrated and to look for other solution to the problem they’ve created. I’m already looking for other ARM’s that is almost the price they are offering. They are not the only one doing this.

I don’t know… looks like they are fomenting us at a maximum level to buy but we don’t want to WAIT any longer… we have projects to run and depends on a project that was promised to begin last year. Lot of us are allocating people to deal with this new tool, for creating new projects, new solutions and WE EVEN DON’T KNOW WHEN they will be available to the market, simply because they promise and don’t fulfill it.

I’m sorry…. but all the world noticed those hardwares, every one is interested, they appeared with a half dozen prototypes with some kind of defect bidding it @ ebay… Don’t know… raspberry foundation with those promises and delays are looking they are not up to the challenge and maybe won’t be able to accomplish what they offered…

I may and want to be wrong with those statements I said but i’m sure other professionals counting on rasp are feeling exactly as I am in some points…

I don’t want to start any discussions around this subject here… I just want they stop marketing and make it WORK. They show from quake 3 to apple tv demos…cool BUT… THIS MEANS NOTHING to those who need this tool. if we CAN’T have access to it, doesn’t matter the power of the hardware. We can’t make it happen…

Shame on rasp.

We’re going as fast as we can – if you want a flavour of how hard this is to coordinate and how long it takes to get everything together, I suggest you build your own $25 computer from scratch. Let us know how you get on.

Raspberry Pi foundation, please ignore this fool above. He is not worth your attention and time, and all of us others do greatly appreciate your work and are hapily waiting for the launch :)
We know you do your best!

Greetings from the Netherlands

If you don’t want to start any discussion on the subject, why don’t you STFU.

The project aims at a EDUCATIONAL tool, not just something you shovel inside a pretty case with some custom (or not) software to sell at a higher markup

I think you dont know what the raspberry foundation is and what they want!? This device is not (primary) made for “professionals”. they do their best for it! I have great respect for the team!

> Well… all of us are very anxious […]
> […] but i’m getting very FRUSTRATED with this launch […]

Unfortunately now it is too late to orient your parents to give you the correct upbringing,
and you will not be able to deal with these kind of situations for pretty much all your life.

> I’m already looking for other ARM’s that is almost the price […]

Really? Who are you trying to convince? It seems to me the answer is ‘yourself’.

> we have projects to run and depends on a project that was promised […]

Nobody seriously depends on something that ‘was promised’. I mean, nobody competent.

> Lot of us are allocating people to deal […]

LOL :D

> […] i’m sure other *professionals* counting on […]

Really? LOL :D

> I don’t want to start any discussions […]

And I should not be feeding the trolls, but I felt this is an opportunity to get an
unrelated message to more people. If you are going to have children please learn
how to deny their request, learn how to say “no” to them, otherwise you will be
raising a person unable to deal with refusals, and this kind of people is extremely
detrimental to society, as our dear Markus wonderfully exemplified.

Good work, its quite hard to believe that people such as Markus exist, maybe its a troll-bot

I honestly can’t believe someone took the time to write a comment such as this.

I would like to say I could not disagree more and completely agree with all of the replies to these comments.

Honestly, who promises a product and allocates people (if you really have) based on another product that’s still in development and not available? If you really have done this, then all I can say is I hope you have learnt your lesson.

I would like to say I’m totally in awe of this device and everything the foundation has done to date.

Like everyone else I honestly can’t wait for this product to be available, but the thing everyone needs to remember is that the education market is where this is targeted. Not your average home user who wants a new Media PC or whatever else.

I can’t praise your guys (and gals) enough for the work you have done and time you have invested in this project and only hope it receives the success it deserves.

Thanks for everyone involved.

Matt

As i saw… even the posts needs a moderator… so… i don’t care if you don’t post it… BUT DELIVER THIS MESSAGE to the creators of the PRODUCT… at least.

Thanks.

Delivered, and given the attention it deserves, ie almost nothing.

I’m sorry if ask something stupid – i tend to – but is it possible to get multichannel audio via HDMI? I know this question doesn’t relate to this topic, but i’m just lazy to register to the forum.

I assume it should be able to do the full 8 channels available to it in HDMI. It would strike me as odd if Broadcom didn’t include that support in this chip.

Awesome project looking forward to see more of the potential of this board. :)
I maybe order one myself to experiment with :)

I think it’s fairly safe to say that a lot of people are very excited and are eagerly awaiting “Raspberry Pi Model B (Add to cart) and the following ker-thump of the package on their doormat. Please remember folks that:
•this is a project that most (if not all) of the team are running in spare or borrowed time…
•even in this ‘digital’ world, some things take time to do…
•the patience of the team is incredible… That no one has snapped after, “Where can I pre-order?”, “When will you be shipping to Meerkovo?”, “Let me know when I can order” etc is nothing short of a miracle…

Sorry Liz et al if I’ve made any errors, lol!

I am very close to sure that they will let us know when we can order. And then they will run the get into the panic room before the stampede is reaching their desk :-D

Hi, we’re 5 friends and we need five board, do we have to order it separately? And pay five shippment cost to ship five board to the same place!!

That’s a little bit frustrating, how about to permit very little batch of board for every order? Like 3 board max per order, o 5 or 10….

So we can divide the shippment cost…

Thanks.

Yes, me and my 49 other friends all live in the same house and all share the same PayPal account. Will there be a problem shipping all 50 to the same place at day one because $35 + shipping is far too expensive for an individual to pay. Actually I would expect you to offer me a discount on such an order. I’m sure you grant me my wish and ignore the 1 per person for the first batch rule…..

Raspberry Pi people, please don’t let such comments grind you down and understand that the vast, vast bulk of the readers of the forums respect your restrictions and understands why you are implementing them.

Blimey, you have a lot of friends. Unless one of them is Kylie Minogue, I’m afraid I will have to decline your kind offer.

I should be so lucky….

If you live in the same house and share a paypal account you can share 1 unit and save on shipping :)
I would be happy to share one unit with my friends till the next batch comes.

Oh, I sort of missed that 1-board-per-person-rule at the frontside. But I respect it, of course.

I was planning to order at least 2 – one for my brother as a (slightly late… in fact it might be just right for his birthday now ;-) christmas gift and one for myself. Now I’ll see… maybe he’s ordering one himself and I’ll pay it. Then we’ll see if we both get one from the first batch; it looks quite like it might be sold out soon.

Shipping costs aren’t really what I am concerned about. I bought much slower boards for far more money in the past. Those are still here… ready to play with

(I just found out that I am far more a linux guy than an ARM7-guy… ;-)

Great work guys!!!

I hope I am going to be able to get my hands on one at launch. I don’t like the idea of 10000 being snapped up by 2500 buying 4 each! One for media centre, one for my automated curtains, one for my goldfish to swim around and one to tinker with…
One to tinker with should be enough for now surely!

Do you have numbers of people subscribed to the mailing list? How many buyers are expected for the first batch? (10.000 because we have only 10.000 haha ;) i mean theoretical)

I was so hoping to get myself one of these for my Birthday, but it looks like I’m going to have to push my Birthday back a few days or so. Not going to get one before tomorrow am I? I feel like a kid at Christmas at the moment, so eager, so excited.

Thanks to the RPi team for making a (almost) 42yo feel like a kid again. I can’t wait!
The suspense is killing me!!!

According to raspi twitter as of yesterday, the first boards will be arriving from the factory in couple of weeks. Judging by that, the launch is propably in the later half of february.

The boards are being made in China. I hope that the first batch were sent prior to the Chinese New Year and are on their way by ship – that means they will be here part way through February. If not, they might be delayed by a week or so by Chinese New Year. Don’t get mad at Liz / Eben or anyone else: they’re doing their level best.

Well, Liz laughed off the poster who asked if they had accounted for Chinese NY in the estimate of a later January launch and I also read the boards would be shipped by airmail from China, so they should really have arrived by now. Since we haven’t heard anything about recieveing the boards in the UK for final testing I am guessing they were either slightly delayed and will now arrive early Feb and go on sale after some testing, or it is for some reason being kept secret that the boards have already arrived in the UK and will go on sale in the very near future. I am leaning towards the first theory.

Well… or you may check with the customs… (if you order stuff from China in Switzerland it’s quite sure customs opens and examines every single piece which is bigger than a peanut… and you pay them for each of those peanuts…)

As Chinese New Year lasts up to the 9th february and we haven’t heard anything new yet (it was announced to the end of january, we remember…) I think we’ll have to wait another month. If the first batch hasn’t been shipped before the beginning of Chinese New Year (23th january) really *nothing* will be happen in this period. Even shipping from china in this time is nearly impossible.

Bad to say but maybe the end of february is much more realistic…

can’t wait to get hold of just one of these (i work in a university as an audio/visual/lighting tech and ive got some mean plans!) hopefully i can workout how to run some dmx code on one of these and do some really smart stuff with moving head’s and other dmx fixtures. also works really good for av guys as a cheap platform for video streaming (a few of these and a router beats the price of most pro av kit easy)

It makes me smile,,, “no case??” “only does this” ” doesnt do that” come on, its a fabulous gateway in to computing for young and not so young at a price thats accessible to all. A vision realised and a great one at that! The abilities of this wonderful machine far exceeds this persons expectations and the expectations of many others. Surprises and warm feelings of wonder make a fabulous change in this age of uncertanty, economic downturn and negativity. I look forward to owning a Raspberry Pi and developing quality time with my young sons learning the about foundation of this worlds computing infrastructure.

I must say I was most disappointed when I first turned on the alpha board I have, only to find that Kylie Minogue DID NOT materialise in the flesh in front of me. Shoddy I thought. Shoddy.

I realy feel bad for you, better luck when turning on your first productionboard!

James, when Kylie *does* appear can you please check her into github so we can all clone her?

Is there a release date of the hardware to purchase?

no nothing is set in stone at the moment

I fear that the Rasberry Pi might be losing its way, here. Sure, you (not me, you) can do some very clever things with it… but should XBMC, Airplay and other pieces of magnificent geekery be the public face of this educational computer?
I’m from the Sinclair ZX-81 generation. Learning about computing started with 10 PRINT “HELLO”; 20 GOTO 10 and suchlike. I’m very excited by this little gadget and can’t wait to get my paws on one… but I don’t see it bringing about a democratization of computer science. The high-end stuff that can be done with the ‘Pi’ is very exciting, but it reinforces the notion that there’s a huge gulf between what a learner might accomplish, and what they can play with if they just download the work of experts.
Perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised when I read the manual. I hope so… at the moment this doesn’t seem terribly ‘accessible’. Sorry about that, but that’s my perception.

They are not really the public face. They are just demonstrations of things people have done with the device.

The ultimate aim is education, and whilst that will take a while to get going (lots of stuff to do), that’s where we are heading.

Totally agree. I showed my children a ZXSpectrum over christmas and taught them some simple programming. They loved it and wanted more. They said “Why can’t we do that on our PC?” Doh! Certainly for the education market we need to keep it simple.

I think AskAboutXenu has a good point here. If you intend to build a educational platform, you should distance yourself from all the consumer stuff.

You will end up attracting the wrong kind of buzz. This in turn will confuse people about the real intent of the project. This never happened with the OLPC project. They were very clear about their
intent from the beginning.

And look where that got them.

We need a base of users outside of education so that all the bugs are ironed out ready for the education side.

There’s nothing wrong with having 2 target audiences, but you should be clear about it from the beginning. Also, you have to fulfill the needs and expectations of both target groups.

We have, from the very start, stated that the first batch will probably end up mostly with hobbyists, because we need their input to fine tune the platform ready for the educational release later this year.

I would say we have one major target audience, education, and many many more subtargets, all of whom add value; value that is absorbed and finds it way to education.

And why do we need to fulfil anyone’s arbitrary expectations and needs? We make a product. People use it. If it doesn’t fulfil their expectations, why is that the Foundations fault? We have been very very open with everything, failed expectations surely is the fault of the buyer under these circumstances?

Release date?

Isn’t one.

I know that the R-Pi will be GLES 2.0 compliant hardware but will there be drivers available on release to install on Linux?

Yes

I am from india where i get raspberrypi pls help if you know pls send the address to this e-mail id:faizdude6@gmail.com.

Hi guys. I run a Danish website about cloud computing, and I am really looking forward to trying out your system. I have written about you in the past and recently I wrote a new article exlusively about you (http://cloudblog.dk/raspberry-pi-gor-klar-til-lancering). It’s in Danish, but try with Google translate.

Are you guys working on real time extensions to your kernel? This little guy would really be great for LinuxCNC and other projects using RTAI. More CPU performance would be nice too, but I guess that would be for the mark 2 versions.

In case you are wondering LinuxCNC is a great educational platform. While it is focused on DIY CNC systems, it is also well enough done that it is a passable training platform for both CNC systems and PLC systems.

Awesome piece of work. Have watched computers evolve since Apple][ , Sinclair,
TRS-80, etc. This is a beautiful, giant leap. I hope to get one soon and wish you best of luck with us Linux folks.

clicking the “Zip” icon at https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux in an attempt to download the repository as a zip file gets me to a “502 Bad Gateway” page. Any ideas?

https://nodeload.github.com/raspberrypi/linux/zipball/rpi-patches
works for me (118MB) though the recommended method is:
git clone git://github.com/raspberrypi/linux.git

Is there any chance the PCB will be put on github or otherwise made available?

(sorry if this has been asked but one can’t search the forums for TLAs like PCB)

This is a great thing that you’re doing! Hardware wise it’s amazing! Lots of features and a decent price. In the future I hope you will keep upgrading the hardware while keeping the price in the same range.

You should pay more attention to the software stack. I know it’s hard, but try to get whatever patches you make upstream as well. In the Linux world, that became the best warranty on the quality of your work. This will boost the trust of the developers that might be interested investing in the platform. It will also make the whole project more future-proof.

So, what (if any) work is being done to get the raaspberry pi changes to the kernel into mainline?

Is this actually a fork? You’re going to be creating an OS based on Linux? Even if it’s a continually maintained patch, it’s not a fork. This isn’t meant to be rude; I just want the terminology to be accurate.

Well… this is awkward. I ordered a preloaded SD so I could start trying out my Raspberry Pi as soon as I got it. But it seems that I will have to make my own. The one I got shoots so many exceptions at me that I can’t keep up. Good way to waste my money though.

News

Latest posts

How to build your own Raspberry Pi webcam

Meet Allie Katz: 3D printing expert

Medical equipment manufacturer Bio Business scaled up with Raspberry Pi

Clippy gets smarter with Raspberry Pi and ChatGPT

Next Post

Livecoding with Qt5 on the Raspberry Pi

Previous Post

XBMC running on Raspberry Pi

Share this post

240 comments

ukscone

DaQatz

Michael Stubbs

Kyle

Nils

Ryan Sharp

plugwash

Ryan Sharp

Sven

99guspuppet

Z.T.

Hazor

Hazor

Birgit

Hazor

Sancho

Jongoleur

Maimon Mons

JamesH

John

shawnmb

Dandapani

plugwash

Jeff

Michael Hartman

Jon Steidel

Jeff

Jongoleur

Jeff

Mike

Jim Nylén

Sander

Jeff

kme

cowfodder

Max

hippy

Sander

Lars T. Hansen

Jeff

shaurz

Someone

cyclotron

gsh

MartyPG13

slm

David R

slm

Adamm

nelson

Hal

JamesH

davervw

davidb24v

Jeff

mengel

RMW5

spurious

axiomprime

MansfieldMatt

Julian Grammer

Cookie Monster

DaQatz

LDericher

Andreas Sommer

Chromatix

Roger Wolff

kkolev