Yes, I agree that a documented chip is better than an undocumented one.
But I, for one, am ecstatic that I will finally be able put a few boxes here and there around my house for various automation tasks.
Running Linux itself is a HUGE step towards openness. I actually don't care about the GPU.
The closest thing (in price+performance+flexibility) are open-source-compatible routers onto which I can try loading up an openwrt-derived distro (4 MB RAM, 4 MB Flash) or expensive Arduino boards, plug computers etc! This is a giant leap forward, and I am grateful to Raspberry Pi/Broadcom for trying to make a tinkerer-friendly board like this.
Well you would be better off with an Atmel SAM9 or the Marvell chip (used in the Pogoplug). Of course the BeagleBone [1] (OMAP) is $89 and runs Linux (and its shipping now, has a great community, blah blah blah.) The key being the documentation of course. I was hoping for a machine with a usable HDMI implementation that I could run a custom software load on. Can sell a million of those. R.Pi is not that board apparently. I'm looking at the STM32F [2] which is a Cortex M4 design which I am pretty sure I can get a Linux kernel running on (no video) and it should cost about $30 configured as I'd like (ethernet, serial, USB (for hard drive), and an extra 128MB of memory using PSM ram.
But I, for one, am ecstatic that I will finally be able put a few boxes here and there around my house for various automation tasks.
Running Linux itself is a HUGE step towards openness. I actually don't care about the GPU.
The closest thing (in price+performance+flexibility) are open-source-compatible routers onto which I can try loading up an openwrt-derived distro (4 MB RAM, 4 MB Flash) or expensive Arduino boards, plug computers etc! This is a giant leap forward, and I am grateful to Raspberry Pi/Broadcom for trying to make a tinkerer-friendly board like this.