The Pi Zero is a full SoC which naturally runs Linux. Any Linux SoC with USB (so basically all of them) could use used in the same way.

This article is about the RP2350's microcontroller cores. It doesn't even have an MMU, so running Linux on it is much more interesting. It's not as capable as the normal Linux we run on bigger boards, but it's still interesting.

I used to do the same thing with a full RPi4. I’m pretty sure that was the first non-pi zero that worked in gadget mode.

I was trying to make an attached Linux machine for my iPad instead of using a cloud VM. It was pretty effective, but at the time the ARM distributions were difficult to run what I wanted. Now, however, it would be significantly better.

Any non RP2xxx pi can be used like that. Unrelated to this post at all? I only fall back to that when there is no interwebs, otherwise connecting over ssh to a normal server is far more productive.

I carry around an pwnagotchi[1], it serves not only as a cute little paper display, but also a battery powered Linux box.

Can do everything you wanna do, in a cute little box attached to a backpack.

My battery lasts about 3 hours, but its easy to juice it up if we go hiking and need a common filesystem up some mountain somewhere, know what I’m saying ..

(PS - the pwnatotchi part is just an app you can disable if you just want your Linux box to be a Linux box, but it sure is a fun little toy also ..)

[1] - https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=pwnagotchi

Thanks for linking this, I would not have expected this usage (more from the iPad side being locked down) and it has inspired some thought.

Cool, but any SBC that runs Linux and has a USB port that supports gadget mode can do this. Either way, what does this have to do with the article?

Gotta get Pi Zero 2, way stronger hardware

side note: I wish it had more ram so you could mount it in VS Code vs. developing through SSH

This is a really good way to side step certain kinds of Apple MFI. "I'm not a custom super widget?! I'm an ethernet adapter!!"

That was Intel Quark. It was too expensive for the “big microcontroller” use case and too power hungry for the “small Linux” use case.

The marketing was confusing, I’m not sure Intel even knew what it was for, except to show investors they had an IoT play.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quark

I found some of these boards in a box last year and was unable to do anything with them… Intel has thoroughly erased all documentation and SDKs from the internet. If anyone has those artifacts, please push to archive.org

For all intents and purposes, the fist raspberry pi is pretty much that, except maybe the tailored OS. Although I'm not sure what would even fit between a fully featured rtos and a trimmed down linux.

That is too practical. For ultimate HN bait it needs to include Rust deployed (over QUIC) as WASM on RISC-V.

What about Commodore where it took 7 hrs to boot (video YT)

Edit: oh damn this one is even worse 8.4 days ha

Is that the same Dmitry that got the linux kernal to run on an atmega?

Has anyone run linux on thermionic valves yet?

Linux in PDF was impressive in a different way

Running native vs running under emulation is a complete different beast

Any turning machine can boot Linux under emulation

RISC-V needs an inexpensive, performant part for it to be used in the consumer space.

The fastest available RISC-V consumer chip is orders of magnitude slower than a Raspberry Pi 5. Example: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/15998376?baseli...

This one runs Linux on the ARM cores rather than the RISC-V cores in the same package, so it's apples and oranges, but still pretty neat for something that comes essentially with a companion MCU and is in the same form factor:

https://milkv.io/duo

In embedded systems it's very common to have a bigger SoC and a satellite MCU to handle e.g. network comm and power lifecycle. I've still not really tried out my Milk-V Duo, but it's interesting to get a combo like this in a hobbyist board form factor.

They also claim desktop-class performance for this RISC-V-based miniITX board, it's a bit weird though since it doesn't claim RVA23 compliance:

https://milkv.io/titan

Availability is a major factor in projects like this.

It's an open source core design [0], so pretty open.

[0] https://github.com/Wren6991/Hazard3

The Hazard 3 is basically a hobby project of Luke Wren, a Raspberry Pi Employee. He's contiuing to evolve it further, but I don't think it's ready for a full replacement of the Cortex-M yet, especially in regards to the Security Features.

The source code is all from Luke Wren and I don't think other cores use the source code directly, but improvements to test harnesses or general implementation patterns as well as better software support help other cores: https://github.com/Wren6991/Hazard3

For the SoCs I would expect to see an off-the-shelf Risc-V core (certainly no Hazard3 as the main CPU), but we'll see.

You can probably already get that if you order a somewhat significant amount of chips directly from Raspberry Pi. They seem to already have everything required for it, it's literally just setting a bit differently during factory programming.

But I'm assuming you're talking about for consumer use, in which case my question is why? There is absolutely no way you're ever benefiting from them spinning up an extra SKU with significantly less volume (most people want the ARM cores).

Even if they decide to eat the costs for the benefit of consumers, at most the chip would be what, 15 cents cheaper? I really struggle to see how that's a meaningful difference for hobbyist use.

>> I wish I could buy RP2350 with the ARM cores being hard-fused disabled, "cheaper" since no ARM royalties would have to be paid.

Better yet, put 4 RISC-V cores on there!

> I think such device could cost about 60 euros

Making a thing made, shipped and delivered at 60 euros each on credit cards is HARD. 600 is easier. 60m consider it done. I wouldn't want to even make and sell, idk, a lens cap for a camera, at that price, without first owning couple factories running at healthy levels of utilization. Maaaaybe if my customers would be happy with a 3D printed artisanal version of it. But even then it'll technically be delivered at a slight loss.

They don’t make cellphones, they make little computers. Hypothetically you could probably use an Arduino or an esp32 to make a cellphone, but you wouldn’t say those organizations lack an all-integrated consumer device, right? They just aren’t in that business.

First, note that what's on that article is not an Raspberry Pi, it's a Raspberry Pi Pico.

I'm not sure about what you want. You don't want a phone, so you want... A tablet, maybe? Or a Raspberry Pi 3/4/5 with a touch screen? Do you want a small screen? Big? Keyboard/Keypad? Touch only?

You can buy touchscreen enclosures for the various pi models. If you want to put in the effort to make your own PCB you could really slim it down by using a pi compute module