Why arch linux on raspberry pi?

It maybe is a dumb question but I want to know why you should put arch linux on a raspberry.

 

Depends on what you want to do with it. If you're going to use the Raspberry Pi as a server for online stuff, you might want to use Debian or Pidora and get just the same result. If you're going to use the Raspberry Pi for hardware development projects, you might want to install Arch or Pidora to get the latest development tools. Arch has the benefit of having all the latest dev tools available immediately through the AUR, Pidora has a lot of tools through fedorapeople, but not as much as the AUR, and to get the same tools in Debian on the ARM, you'll have to enable individual private repos, which involves a bit more research sometimes.

There is hardly any performance difference between the different Pi-specific ARM distros, it's a matter of convenience in relation to the project.

N.B.: I got your PM, but you haven't enabled your contact form on your profile, so I can't PM you back. However, since your question is largely related to your post here, and there is nothing private about your question, allow me to answer it here.

You were asking me in PM how I make my own tablets. That's pretty easy. I just order parts from different sources, often Alibaba/Aliexpress, but also from Olimex or other dev hardware providers. When you buy from Alibaba, you often have to order a batch of ten, so you sometimes have to get together with others to place an order. Tablets are VERY simple hardware designs, they basically consist of a motherboard kit with SoC on it, basically the same as a standard dev kit, but instead of normal headers, these boards have ZIF connectors or solder points. You have to do some research to know what mobo offers what possibilities for software compatibility (open source drivers or reverse engineered drivers for instance), and what I/O they support, just like you would do with an ARM-based dev kit. Then you buy a screen that has the right connectors (this is remarkably unified, it's not that difficult), choose a battery and the connectors you need, and either buy a premade enclosure (are lot of these are readily available), or 3D print your own.

The benefit of making your own tablets is not that it's cheaper than buying a standard open source-supported Chinese tablet, but that you have flexibility with regards to the connections and the peripherals. I also buy cheap Chinese tablets (Allwinner or Rockchip SoC based ones are very cheap, like sub 50 USD typically for a dual core and sub 80 USD for a quad core), and pull them apart to get parts for other DIY tablets, while using them as dev kits themselves. And that's just the thing, like a Raspberry Pi costs 35 USD and has a really slow SoC and little RAM, while a 50 USD tablet is basically a much more powerful ARM-based dev board that does just the same as the Raspberry Pi, and, contrary to the Raspi, does have open source graphics drivers, but has 1 or 2 GB of RAM, and comes with a display and Li-Ion battery. It's all about buying "parts kits", and sometimes the best parts kits are regular cheap tablets.

A caveat is that in order to play with these things, you have to know how to make them work with an operating system, either with a regular linux distro, or with Android. It's not that difficult, but still, it's not that easy either, you have to know what kind of hardware to look out for to have easy software compatibility, and you have to know how to use github and other sources to get hardware compatibility modules and things.

Thanks for the pretty quick reply. This answer will probably help me alot with the raspberry pi and I will look up more about the tablets. I am kinda bored and wanted to do something with my raspberry pi, so this will help me alot.

 

 

Never though of purchasing tablets from other countries, but I got a nexus 7 and love it, its brilliant for when my laptop cant even fit, like when I go on holiday the safes there are stupid small, so a tiny wireless keyboard/mouse with an OTG cable works superb.

Also depending on what you do with the Pi, personally I would turn it into a nes or something, I have a cubieboard I plan to run Arch on, just got to get around it, Zoltan is it the same as the x64 install?, I was going to go with Fedora but the thing is for playing around with, just need to build a ghetto cooling solution for it as it runs rather hot for my liking even not underload, could just stick it in my PC lol.

Just remember this you can do almost anything with arch, so dont settle on one project, build it, record how you did it in steps in a little notebook or in notepad, then scrap it and build something else, repeat.