[Tech] Partimus & Raspberry Pi, etc.

Christian Einfeldt einfeldt at gmail.com
Sun Sep 25 22:41:20 PDT 2016


Hi,

Thanks for your reply, Michael.  My replies are in line below...

On Sun, Sep 25, 2016 at 8:54 PM, Michael Paoli <
Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> From: partimus at boldandbusted.com
>> Subject: [Tech] Partimus & Raspberry Pi 3 Model Bs
>> Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2016 17:35:09 -0700
>>
>
> I propose that we put a bit of money on the table, and replace all the
>> computers, and their power-hungry motherboards, with Raspberry Pi 3s,
>>
>
> Raspberry Pi - great for many things, but I (mostly) don't see it as a fit
> -
> at least at this time - for most of the, at least, "core" Partimus stuff.
>

I agree with this.  And I like what Michael says below about the teaching
environment.


>
> Notably, e.g. school environments, school "labs" and such, I don't think
> Pi will typically have the speed/power that many will want/require,
> notably CPU horsepower, RAM, storage, etc.  Also, architecture, generally
> much more available for "i386"/amd64 architectures that ARM (Pi).  I think
> it's certainly good to consider - and occasionally revisit the question,
> though.  Pi might later become a good/excellent fit ... but I don't think
> it (quite) is ... *yet*.  There's also the bit too, about how too be
> applied to what use.
>
>
<snip>


> Something, e.g. like DebianEdu/Skolelinux
> probably an excellent fit


We have been exploring with ECS the idea of teaching programming and sys
admin skills to some of the residents.  Experimentation like that is where
Raspberry Pi might lend itself.  In that setting, the students are not
expecting speed, they are focused on learning to write code, and the apps
they need for that are not as resource intensive as the heavy video
watching / we browsing that we see taking place at the low income shelters.



>
>  And with Pi, still need displays - HDMI (or adapters) -
> those may be non-trivial part of cost, or hard to get lots of suitable
> donations
> to cover.


Here's the other issue that we are facing.  I am the person who is
executing a lot of these installs and so forth, and my skills are extremely
limited.  In order for any roll-out of Raspberry PIs to work, we would need
someone who is willing to commit to making the idea succeed from start to
finish.  I don't have the skills to do much of that.  I am basically only
able to do simple desktop installs.  If we develop a plan the one key
component is an ironclad commitment from the person who starts it to see it
through to success.  That person cannot be me.  I can and do and have
committed to simple desktop installs because I can make it work.  More than
that and I am dead in the water.
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