Why does anybody use Rasberry Pi. It is a black box tightly sealed with patents and protected by corporations. It isn't even remotely an open platform unless you think a few pages of documentation for the enormous amounts of blobs is 'open'. It's one big mess of Broadcom firmware.
Go buy a beagleboard instead, or any taiwanese hardware almost all of them release full docs
Could you point to anything within a comparable price range to the Raspberry Pi? I have some decent use cases for a ~$40 computer, and I'd gladly purchase an open version if one is available, but the Beagleboards seem to be three or four times as expensive.
True but at least you can actually buy a beagleboard :P There's an 8mos waiting list for Pi's where I live, only to get a broadcom firmware ridden toy.
With completely open hardware you could hack a beagleboard forever. Or buy a Cubieboard for $49, or Uputer Pi for $69,
I understand - that wasn't meant as a challenge; rather, a request for a recommendation! I was on the verge of placing an order for a Raspberry Pi today.
I took a look at the Arch Linux ARM devices (http://archlinuxarm.org/), but if you (or anybody else) has any experience with a particular one, let me know.
I actually like those thumbdrive-size computer like MK808 or UG802. They are smaller than Rasberry Pi, with an enclosure, more powerful hardware, and built-in Wifi.
The only thing is it comes with Android and porting other Linux to it is still in early stage.
Go buy a beagleboard instead, or any taiwanese hardware almost all of them release full docs