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Looking at my Raspberry Pi Zero and maybe being partially inspired by the now defunct "One Laptop Per Child" project from a few years ago, which aimed at building a laptop for under $100, I wondered if a usable computer could be created out of the Raspberry Pi Zero. Or maybe it's just the challenge of seeing how far this tiny computer can be pushed that had me wondering whether this was even possible. Is there much point to this? Probably not. However, even though this may not be that practical, the Pi Zero, could be replaced with the slightly more expensive Pi 4 2GB, which would make for a pretty efficient and usable desktop PC.   

A complete set of desktop apps including file browser, media player, browser and remote desktop running in 130MB RAM.

What is a Raspberry Pi Zero..? It's a single board computer built by the Raspberry Pi Foundation which can easily fit in the palm of your hand being just 65mm x 30mm. There are basically two different Pi Zero models, which are differentiated by having WIFI and Bluetooth or not. (There's also the more recently launched Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, which has 4 cores, but the same 512 MB RAM and the form factor.) Costing just over $10 for the WIFI + Bluetooth model, they are very affordable and might just make for a very cheap base to build a computer. Another interesting point is that they are so energy efficient that they can be powered from a battery pack for hours or even from solar panels. That being said however, it was not designed to be a desktop computer as it's mostly used as an embedded device in robotics, sensor reading or computer vision projects. For a more powerful desktop machine, there is the current latest version, the Pi 4, which actually makes for a pretty usable machine, but at a higher cost.  

I suppose to some degree, the goals of the Pi Foundation aligns partially with the OLPC initiative in that their goal is around education. It seems to be a perfect fit - if the hardware could be pushed beyond what it was designed for. 

So, how could a simple £10 board be converted into a PC? For starters, the board comes bare, in that there are no peripherals.

1) Keyboard

2) Mouse

3) Monitor

4) SD Card

5) Case

6) Power Supply

7) Mini HDMI to HDMJI adapter

8) Micro USB to USB adapter

9) Depending on whether HDMI sound is used or not, a USB hub and sound card

The most expensive part of the build will probably be the monitor, but if a cheap monitor is used, it may still come in at around $100.

With the hardware defined, the next part is the software. This is arguably the most important part. We're going to be running a Linux distribution on the computer. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has done some excellent work on packaging a Linux based operating system for the the Raspberry Pi. However, I suspect that the desktop version of their OS is more aimed at the much more powerfull Raspberry Pi 4 and not the Zero. Thus, whilst it technically works on the Pi Zero, to me, it's too slow. The Pi Zero has very limited specs, the highlights being:

• 1GHz ARM CPU - BCM 2835 SOC
• 512MB RAM
• Wifi and Bluetooth

Gnome 3 has finally been launched after what seems like years! So long in fact that Canonical/Ubuntu has decided to drop it from their upcoming version. But even if you don't want to wait for the major editions to release it in their next versions, you can install it right now.

This is probably one of the biggest changes to the Gnome interface for the past few years, so it's a big change.

Have a look at the following to see how to install it:
http://digitizor.com/2011/04/07/install-gnome3-desktop-ubuntu/

I took the plunge... After working solely on Ubuntu for over a year, I decided to install the latest Kubuntu on my main laptop. I've never really worked with KDE much apart from trying it out briefly here and there but never ended up sticking with it as it was always installed on a secondary machine. So, why did I decide to swap? I've have had a few difficulties with KDE before and it seemed a little buggy, but I've become pretty comfortable with Linux, so I was confident that I can sort out anything thrown at me. Maybe I was just too comfortable with Gnome to bother swapping and readjusting to a new environment but I've always been envious of the visual look of KDE... It's probably a bit unfair to call KDE "buggy" - I've always run it in a VM or on an old laptop which hardly had enough power, so this time around, I'm doing it properly!

I'm fairly new to Linux in spite of having a Linux based machine in my room for the past 2 years. I installed Mandrake 10, duel booting with Windows XP a while ago but never really ended up using it much. After trying to install the latest graphic drivers, I ended up messing up the X interface and all I got was a black screen. It took another 3 hours to figure out how to undo the mistake.

I eventually came to the conclusion that Linux was free, and great for certain things, but best left to the uber-geeks who had the time on their hands. I didn't feel like spending weeks to get a usable system and learn how to use it.

This all changed when I was given a copy of Ubuntu 8.10. I installed it on a virtual machine and tried it out because I'd heard quite a bit about it. There wasn't anything to it - It just ran. Everything just worked “out of the box”. But then again, it was running in virtual machine which had the network settings, drivers etc. already. Using it for a few days, I felt braver, and decided to format my old laptop, which was running Windows XP to see what it would be like running on the native hardware.

Once installed, it run mostly without problems. I could immediately connect to my home network by plugging in an Ethernet cable. The next step was to get the wireless network working. This took a little time reading various articles, but I think that I eventually just installed the drivers via the “Hardware Drivers” GUI that had already picked up the new hardware. So in hind-sight, it was really easy. Once the wiresles drivers were installed, I followed the same approach and installed the graphics drivers and that was all - Everything else was flawless.

Ok, now I had a system that worked, but I didn't like the interface very much. It didn't look very “polished”, as opposed to the Vista interface on my other laptop. So, I set out trying to get the interface looking as good. I happily discovered websites like gmomelook.org that provided themes and add-ons for the gnome interface that ubuntu uses. It was a simple case in most instances of downloading the files and dragging them onto the “Appearance” application. This then installed the theme and allowed changing the default icons, colours and windows look. This improved matters and made for quite a nice looking interface. Looking at a number of YouTube videos, trying to work out how other people had set up their machines, I came across “CompizFusion” which enabled a 3D desktop by means of 4 sides of a cube appearing as seperate desktops. This allowed one to work on one desktop, but with a click of a button, rotate it in 3D to a new face on the cube to present a clean desktop. This prevents the desktops from becoming cluttered with multiple open windows and has had an enormous impact on the way I work. There are many other plugins and settings for CompizFusion that improves the Gnome UI even more.

The next step was to install an application dock in the style of Mac OSX allowing quick launching of applications. After a quick search I found that Cairo Dock was one of the more popular ones. The installation was simple and worked fine. True to form, I themed it with a downloadable skin from within the application – very easy.

While setting up my machine, I made a few mistakes and learnt a lot, but in the end have a system that not only looks good, but is very usable. And best of all... Every piece of software running on my machine is FREE! Most of the day-to-day applications come pre-installed so for a basic user, there's no need to install much. For those users that have to use a particular Windows-only program, there is Wine. Wine allows running of Windows program within Linux. It's not perfect though, but should work in most instances. I've tested it with “Medal Of Honour Alied Assalt” 3D game and it worked perfectly (with a little tweeking).

So, my final conclusion... I'm keeping Ubuntu! At last the world has a practical
alternative to Microsoft's “Windows” (Assuming that you aren't paying for a Mac). As for an everyday user that isn't a total tech-geek, it's definitely worth trying out before forking out for the latest version of Windows. Afterall, it's totally risk free since it doesn't cost anything.