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raspberry pi, xbmc and the new amazon prime

Since amazon bundles its prime with the video steaming, i wanted to check if i can use my raspberry pi with this amazon service also. I searched for some howtos on the web but only found outdated entries.
At the end, it turned out it was working in the past and it is working in the present for windows pcs with a lot of horsepower under the hood. Since amazon bundles a lot of DRM-sh*t, it is impossible to get something done on a pi so far.

First Impression Of RaspberryPi

General

So after a while of borrowing multiply pi's, i've managed to buy one. Of course the shipment was delayed so it arrived at a week full of no time. Finally, i prepared all and started the installation, of course an arch linux (like the guy in the advertisement, "what else?" ;-)). The installation was quite easy, i struggeld a bit with the resizing of my partitions. The magic hint, resizes the extended partition first, then you are able to resize the root partition and everything is fine.

After that, i've browsed through the available packages and started setting up the tiny beast. Writing about window managers is a short one, don't do fancy stuff. Notion is working, openbox and fluxbox also. Of course xbmc is running like a charm. But xfce4 and lxde are a bit to much for the little arm. Kde is working better than expected but like chromium, it is far away from running smooth. A nice howto about installing xfce4 on arm arch linux can be found here. Some general beginner tutorials about different raspberry pi distributions can be found here.

What about using known software? Well, you can but keep in mind, it is an arm cpu under the hood. Midori is currently my first choice for browsing the web. If i need something with a gui, pcmanfm is performing well on the pi. Have some minutes left? Read this nice introduction about the desktop world of the raspberry pi.

Other Operation Systems Then Linux

Talking about the upcomming and possible shooting star firefox os, i can only write that i havn't tried it so far. There is a bunch of tutorials out there, like this, that. A list of possible alternative operation systems for the pi can be found here.

What To Do Now?

Well, first i want to try out the media center suitability of the little pi. I like the idea to control the xbmc via an android mobile. I also want to compare xbmc with openELEC. And for the far away future, i want to build zfs on linux on this little box (why?, of course because i can :-D). A git server is also and always an option, lets see. Privoxy, openVPN, tor, the list is getting longer the more i think about it :-).

List Of Links

Web - Raspberry Pi - beta device out now - CuBox also an alternative

These are populated boards from our first run of beta devices. They’re undergoing electrical testing alongside hardware and software testing at the moment, and if all goes well, the Raspberry Pi you’ll be buying in January (or by auction later this month if they all work as they should) will be exactly like one of these.
Source

I am crossing fingers that beta test runs fine. It is so awesome that such a tiny device can do such a lot.

While browsing through the internet, i also found another device called CuBox. This device comes with a pre installed os, so it is really plug and play. The main advantage are the available ports, like hdmi, two usb, eSata etc. I found a german review on "Der Standard.at". I also stumbled over OpenELEC which is a optimized linux to run XBMC and has an easy to install (on hdd, flash etc.) guide. Maybe my i will plug in such a device in my tv at home soon :-D.