Raspberry Pi delivers its $35 Linux computer

ARS Technica reports the Raspberry Pi foundation has introduced its $35 Linux computer, but got overwhelmed by heavy demand. The product is about the size of a deck of playing cards, it has a 700MHz ARM11 processor and 256MB RAM memory. Demonstrations of the system showed it's capable of running impressive graphics demos and decoding HD video.

The Raspberry Pi foundation attempted to launch its $35 Linux computer on Tuesday evening, but the organization's retail partners couldn't cope with the massive demand. Two British electronic component distributors that intended to sell the product were unable to do so--their websites went down, succumbing to the stampede of eager enthusiasts who sought to purchase the hotly-anticipated system.

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The Raspberry Pi foundation originally began developing the computer with the aim of producing a low-cost system that could be used to teach computer programming to young students. The project has attracted a much larger audience, however, and has gained a tremendous following among Linux users and embedded systems enthusiasts who want to use it for purposes ranging from wearable computing experiments to multimedia set-top box.

Full details over here.

Raspberry Pi delivers its $35 Linux computer - More news at DV Hardware

Microsoft to hinder Linux booting on ARM hardware?

ComputerWorld reports Microsoft has revealed that Secure Boot will be a requirement for all ARM based devices with Windows 8, thereby making it a lot harder or even impossible to install Linux on ARM hardware systems certified for Windows 8.

This confirms that it is indeed possible to disable Secure Boot - but only on non-ARM systems (i.e. traditional PCs.) In other words, it would appear that Microsoft is still locking out GNU/Linux from installation on ARM-based Windows 8 machines.

So this leaves me confused. The document was published some time after Microsoft's post where it states "Microsoft does not mandate or control the settings on PC firmware that control or enable secured boot from any operating system other than Windows", and yet it seems to contradict it. So what's going here? Was Microsoft's blog statement only about non-ARM systems, as the new documentation suggests? And if so, why the discrimination? And finally, is ARM really happy to see Microsoft apparently locking out GNU/Linux from its systems in this way? Let's hope Microsoft can clarify this situation as it did on the previous occasion.

Microsoft to hinder Linux booting on ARM hardware? - More news at DV Hardware

First Look: AMD Trinity APU, Linux Already Runs Well @ Phoronix

Remember those AMD Bulldozer benchmarks we showed back in March from an early engineering sample that was published to OpenBenchmarking.org by one of AMD's partners months prior to the product launch? Well, since the consumer-grade Bulldozer chips are going to be out soon, AMD's partners are already supplying information on the AMD Trinity APUs that won't be launched until next year. The Linux performance appears quite competitive and there's also some new codenames and details to share.

Read more at Phoronix.

First Look: AMD Trinity APU, Linux Already Runs Well @ Phoronix - More news at DV Hardware