yasamoka wroteI doubt that Linutop device can be easily set up by somebody who's not tech-savvy. And when it costs 280 euros, while the Pi costs $35 (though not yet released), and both require knowledge in Linux, and the Pi can be easily connected to an HDTV and network too, then I can't see why the Pi wouldn't be a good solution.
Linutop is a commercial project creating a ultralight portable machine that can emulate a simple PC. It is intended as a replacement/complement to your PC and requires as much knowledge in Linux systems as your PC requires knowledge in Windows systems: you can benefit a lot from the knowledge, but the entry barrier is pretty low (click on this icon, there you go). The idea is revolutionary, and 5 to 10 years from now Apple is going to imitate it and be hailed as visionnaries who changed the tech world.
Raspberry Pi is an electronic board. It's not a PC, and while a great project, it's meant only to be used by hobbyists. From
the FAQ, I see it will be sold with no case, no assembly kit and virtually no component. It has very specific hardware/software requirements that may be within reach of your average geek, but will seem alien to my aunt Salwa. And she's our target, remember.
The board lacks practicality and it's a good thing. It's meant as an introduction to programming (again from the FAQ I'm not inventing anything), and I'm happy to think that it will divert some geeks from the (boring) mainstream x86 Intel chips to use something cooler (like ARM).
Comparing the two projects in terms of ease of access is crazy. Simply labeling them as "linux-oh-then-it-must-be-difficult-to-use" is too simplistic. After all, Android runs on top of a Linux kernel (just like Ubuntu) and everyone seems to think it's idiot-proof. Linutop is meant to be easy, this is what makes it useful. Raspberry Pi is meant to be unusable, that's what makes it useful :)
yasamoka wroteEven is nobody tech-savvy is around, I, for one, would gladly pay a good price for an expert (if he exists) to set something like that up as it would still cost WAY less than anything comparable. And it would offer just what you need.
This is great but also a bit idealistic. I set up a Linux Mint box for my parents and they used it happily for a while. Until something broke. Remember I don't live at home anymore (let alone in the same country). The reason of the error was a slight detail, a slight misconfiguration that drew incompatibilities with some updates. It would've taken me 2 seconds to fix it, but I wasn't there. Made the system unusable.
My parents use Windows XP, because if something goes wrong, they can get a ton of people to repair it.
Same thing goes for the issue at hand. If the target is a young brilliant geek applying to the most prestigious universities and wanting to get into embedded system programming (a.k.a you), then nothing would be more exciting than the "Skype/Raspberry Pi" project. But that's the kind of projects that would draw attention from online communities and tech people. Your 3ammo Samir wouldn't know what to do with that weird looking card and bunch of cables going out of it.
Imagine you go through with it and install the obscure system on your parents' device. You will spend the next years doing tech support, while having them criticize your work and claim that the neighbour's iPad works so much better and they can afford it anyway so I don't see why we should put up with this DIY piece of junk that always breaks anyway...
How are they going to transport it? How to deal with dust accumulating (it has no case remember)? Where can they find a replacement for the "Micro USB" cable? and how can they connect it to the old TV in the mountain house, where they go spend the whole summer?
The reason a finished product costs almost 10 times as a board is precisely because they try to solve these issues as well. I'm like you, I don't care about the overhead (I consider it bloat and try to avoid as much as I can), but I learned not to suggest this for anyone who's not
extremely technical.