http://www.raspberrypi.org/about/ says that they designed it to enable kids to access a cheap platform on which it would be easy to code and that they considered the multimedia capabilities a good hook.
Price was clearly a major factor in making the RPi accessible to all [UK] kids. Their inspiration was in part the BBC Micro series - which were certainly not inexpensive.
RPi is cheaper than a second-hand Nintendo DS.
In short, as I understood it, the RPi was about removing the cost barrier to kids having their own system on which to code and hack both hardware and software.
I ran Linux for years and still use it today for my Pi only but I think the INITIAL learning curve to use a system is less steep with Windows than Linux, particularly if you are presented with a CLI Linux login. If you are presented with a GUI then it may be different for a 6 year old but I wouldn't say that the Linux vs Windows discussion really takes into account how easy it is to get into programming on the platforms.
(I know you can install gcc and get writing C/C++ really quickly but you can do the same with Visual Studio without understanding a package management system).
This is like complaining about how hard it is to get OS X up and running when installing on a Dell, but I see where you're coming from and realize this wasn't you whole point.
Anywho.. I would say it's easier to take skills learned from using Linux and apply them to the Windows OS than the other way around.
Admittedly, I did learn many skills with the command line but this DIDN'T translate to me being a wizard with the DOS prompt on Windows 98 back then - I didn't use the DOS prompt. Task manager didn't show a hierarchy of processes like pstree does now, and pstree didn't come (or even exist?) with RedHat 5.0 or 6.0. This was RedHat, not RHEL.
I got OSX up and running on my Acer Aspire :-)
You're right though, that was difficult.
I think the skills for the different OSes are only mainly applicable to their OS, despite how we think and how easily you and I can use the different platforms.
Using a keyboard and a mouse translates, but nothing else does really. Getting my wife to use OSX is frustrating for her, my brother gets angry using OSX too, my brother is lost under Linux, my mum gets lost under Windows (she's fine with iOS mostly now) and my dad is fine with Windows 7 and before but hates Windows 8. My wife gets lost under Android after using iOS for years.
Don't even think about programming for any of them on any of the platforms!
Jesus, Linux Circa 2000 is very very very different from linux 2015...
Seriously though, I use Linux every other day and my last job involved maintaining racks and racks of Linux servers. I also use a few Raspberry Pi s at home, and I appreciate that things change. The ditching of the normal windowing paradigm is the biggest recent change that made me use Linux less as a desktop OS. I didn't say that things don't change - where did you read that?
But it still stands that giving my mum a Raspberry Pi and an SD card, and she'll be none the wiser about runlevels, CLI, or the main point of the discussion, programming. She'll instead spend more time learning how to use Linux, surely?
Or are you saying that my mum will suddenly be able to start development or something?
Or are you just offended that I had some experiences in the past or something?
When you load this, the only thing that appears on the screen in a Cmd prompt, or powershell. If you think linux is hard to admin from the commend line, windows for people that do not know powershell is next to impossible
The average is not the only group that matters. If you have to spray the entire planet with RPis just to make sure you get one into the hands of the right ten year old, it would be worth it for the things they would be inspired to invent as they grew older.
Of course not. The target market is actually people like me, now in our late 30s/early 40s, who have a powerful nostalgia for the original "Model B".
But I think they missed the point of the Model B, a smart 10-year-old could grok the entire machine. You knew the memory map by heart, what went where, what happened in what order, and so on. The RPi has more in common with a PlayStation than it does with the Beeb. It would be like starting kids on calculus before they'd learnt addition. What we need is to re-start production of the real thing...
But then I don't think the Pi is really about teaching kids to code either.
The Pi Foundation has done a good job of persuading everyone otherwise, but I'm left with a nagging suspicion that a computer designed for kids from the ground up would look very different. It's just too damn complicated for most kids. The nerds get it, but expecting the average ten year old to learn Linux shell scripting or the fine points of Apache installation seems unrealistic to me.
Win 10 on the Pi is about two things. The first is about edging Linux out of the education market. Teachers will indeed prefer Win 10 to Linux, for reasons that others have mentioned - especially if it comes with a basic dev toolchain. Even if that toolchain is very easy to use.
The second is - I guess - selling Office 365 subscriptions on super-cheap hardware, and creating a whole new sub-PC market for Windows and Office.
If I'm right, it's a clever move. It will give Windows and Office access to many new markets worldwide.
Where MS hardware failed on price, the Pi version wins on price. It could be a very strong combination.