Devices: Orange Pi, Sega Dreamcast, and Raspberry Pi
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Orange Pi Board Has Arch-based Linux Distribution in the Works
The developers of the Orange Pi board are planning to release an Arch-based Linux distribution available for its hardware as an alternative to Orange Pi OS.
The developers of the Orange Pi board have made available four operating systems supported for their hardware – Orange Pi OS, Ubuntu, Debian, and Manjaro. Soon, they will be adding another distribution into the mix, one based on Arch Linux.
This version of Arch Linux will be user-friendly and highly compatible with open source drivers. Orange Pi OS (Arch) will ship with LibreOffice and will support most of the major Linux desktops, such as GNOME, KDE, and Xfce.
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Refurb weekend: Sega Dreamcast
Remember when consoles weren't glorified PCs? The 1999 Sega Dreamcast remembers. Sega's final console and introduced on "9/9/99 for $199" before the Sony PlayStation 2 hype machine overwhelmed it, it came on the heels of the Saturn, which had sophisticated hardware but was difficult to program and Sega lost millions on manufacturing them. In some ways the Dreamcast is the Saturn done right: the same SuperH architecture, just way faster (instead of dual SH-2s at 28.6MHz, one big SH-4 at 200MHz), a more conventional GPU (rather than the odd 3D VDP of the Saturn which used quads instead of triangles), and a straightforward uniprocessor design instead of the Saturn's sometimes rickety dual CPU bus. It was also much cheaper to manufacture even considering its use of the Yamaha GD-ROM format; nothing else supported it, but it stored up to a gigabyte and was backwards compatible with CDs.
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Being part of the Raspberry Pi community
Hopefully by the time you read this, the fears over the bird app will have all (thankfully) come to nothing and service will resume as normal. In case it doesn’t though, Raspberry Pi has launched its own Mastodon server at raspberrypi.social, and we at The MagPi will likely follow suit. Otherwise, Raspberry Pi is also exploring braver, younger frontiers with videos on TikTok.
Of course, the magazine will still be published, and I’m sure we’ll find you all again, wherever we end up.