Linux can cure a sweet tooth?

Well, it can if you take a helping of Raspberry Pi.....

I've put my name down for one of these incredible little machines and I cannot wait to get my hands on it. The idea of all that ARMy goodness in such a small package but with such huge possibilities positively makes my sweet tooth hurt just thinking about it.

The possibilities are legion, network media player plugged into the TV, small file server, IP camera when used with a webcam, home automation centre, the list just goes on and on. It really is a shame that the initial release is just one per person.

But one thing I hope it will also do is to allow me to introduce my boys to the possibilities and joys of tinkering. I know, they're still a bit small, but once they get a bit bigger, it will be great letting them mess about with simple programs and such, and letting them develop whatever geekiness they've inherited from me. Knowing they can't brick it is reassuring too, just re-imaging the SD card will take care of that. Not like when a certain un-named young muppet geek wannabe had to take his parents DOS dinosaur back to get it fixed AGAIN after wiping some incredibly important file or other. (I didn't have the installation media, it was a computer lent to us...oops)

Anyway, when I get my hands on it and have had some time to tinker, I'll report back and let you know how I've got on and what I've done with it. I will say this though, I think it could definitely be a revolutionary product, and if it rekindles young people's love of computing, hacking and generally messing about with computers, it would be cheap at twice the price.