Re:VIA launches $49 Android PC
by rogerbinns on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @11:55PM
(#4011462)
The Raspberry Pi starts up by loading an opaque blob into the GPU, and that then runs the CPU under supervision. ie the CPU is a servant and controlled by the GPU, not the other way around as is normal in the PC world.
So irrespective of your video intentions, you are still at the mercy of a blob.
But unless your are a real FOSS zealot (say > 500milli Stallmans) you are at the mercy of the bios, the disk controller firmware and the CPU microcode on any machine
In reality being able to run whatever user programs you want in whatever combination you want without artificial is what FOSS is all about.
Re:VIA launches $49 Android PC
by rogerbinns on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @02:37PM
(#4014588)
The "user programs" you want to run are determined by the operating system. And the operating system is determined by blobs, controllers, BIOS and similar gunk.
If for example the Pi blob is such that Linux kernel 3.7 can't run then you are SOL. Or if on a device like this their blob only works with Android 2.3 then you can't run a different version. Or maybe you can't run one of the BSDs.
The video/GPU is especially relevant in the Pi case because it controls what the CPU can do.
What would be interesting is if one of these boards would be designed such that, by pure coincidence, it could fit into an Apple form factor (cheap/old/maybe used). I've read that in, e.g., Vietnam, people with soldering irons do all sorts of hackish things to iPhones.
Or maybe a market for curved edge form factor casings develops. Maybe it already exists. But I never saw any Apple-like form factors in the mini-ITX offerings. Whenever you see something with a cool form factor, it seems it's always a proprietary package, hermetically sealed, not easy to tinker with.