Finally! After a waiting list of 6 months, today I was delightfully surprised to receive a small forgotten package containing a Raspberry Pi. I looked at the receipt and sure enough, only 25 euros. I admit that I had lost hope in waiting for this device, passing rather to the Beagleboard and the Beaglebone in the meantime. Though the Beagle products are considerably more pricy, this provided me with a very good introduction to linux for embedded systems while awaiting a next generation.

This card is capable of rca and dvi video, internet, quality audio, full Linux operating system, and an extended GPIO port. A seemingly beautiful union of open source software and open source hardware. Time to play. more to come.