[dba-Tech] The wonders of the Raspberry PI

[Jim Lawrence]

It is amazing what can be done with a Raspberry PI.

Aside: According to the designer of one of the most popular Raspberry PI distros (Mate...sounds like latte), the PI will soon be the most popular hardware/software system in the world. His company has been downloading its OS at a rate of approximately 5000 copies an hour and these numbers have been steadily increasing for over a year.

I know this is a little late for Christmas but your kids birthdays are coming up soon. I would suggest a good soccer ball and the following package: 

http://row.kano.me/products/kano-kit

I received a nice Raspberry PI 2 for Christmas and have been thoroughly enjoying it. It has around half a dozen different distros. A complete OS with a substantial selection of applications and servers (full office suite, games (i.e. Mindcraft), SSH, Apache, multiple programming languages, full set of server tools etc etc...) The whole system takes only 3.9 GB so it will run fine on a 16GB SD (probably the smallest SD you can buy at $6.00).  

I finally got the X2Go server installed and running...it only supports a single session but after all it is only a PI. It can support half a dozen SSH client connections without issue though. I will install a copy of MC (Midnight Commander) as its foot print is tiny. Couldn't get Mindcraft to display properly, when accessing it remotely, as the game's graphic driver is not compatible, at least not by default.

I may test the Windows10 offering as 6 bucks for the SD doesn't seems like a big investment.

This device would make a great mini-server. If you wish to add on a few TB drives, a USB power hubs would be needed as a Raspberry's only supports USB connections up to 5 watts. USB 3 uses more wattage. I understand there is even a MondoDB module along with a MySQL and even a Postgress database option. One friend installed a copy of OpenWRT, on the product and is now using it as a very secure router.

This is just a start...

Jim