On 7 March 2012 13:38, Alan Pope <alan.p...@canonical.com> wrote: > > On 07/03/12 13:33, Colin Law wrote: >> Out of interest, in what way is it not open? > > It needs a binary blob for the GPU and to boot apparently. They also > "only" licensed the h.264 and one other codec bundle from broadcom for > that blob. So only certain video files will play back accelerated. So > it wouldn't do for a FreeView set top box, but would be good for > playing back pre-recorded/downloaded h.264 encoded video.
Broadcom bought up the rump of what was Acorn Computers. Acorn designed and developed the ARM chip. (Interestingly, after Acorn was split up and sold off, the rump renamed itself "Element 14". This is now a trading name for Farnell, one of the distribution partners for Rpi.) Broadcom still employs Sophie Wilson, who (back when she was called Roger) designed the ARM chip, BBC BASIC and much of the BBC Micro. Rpi is basically a Broadcom GPU and video-decoder chip with a small, basic ARM CPU added in one corner. It's a very proprietary device and so are the Linux drivers. Something nobody is giving any attention to is that Linux is not the only OS for Rpi. It will also come with Acorn RISC OS, meaning a full networked multitasking Internet-capable GUI OS, complete with optimised BBC BASIC interpreter with ARM assembler, GUI editor and so on. Whereas it's a very low-spec system for Linux, it's a high-end one for RISC OS. For beginners, RISC OS may be a much more appealing prospect. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
