My little Pi

As the Raspberry Pi Foundation rockets towards producing its Pi-millionth board, it’s bringing with it an eager and innovative new generation of computer scientists. If educating an entire generation of children isn’t exciting enough, Linux just so happens to be the software smarts that underpins the whole venture.

We’re part of the generation that grew up tinkering on the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and Commodore 64, along with the Atari ST and Amiga that followed. Modern consoles and laptops seemed to have created an education void for our children to fall into, a void that has been filled beautifully by the Raspberry Pi. It’s not that you can’t be creative or learn to program on a modern PC, but the Pi, with its bare-bones, DIY, get-it-running-yourself approach, just seems to ignite the imagination.

We spoke to Pete Lomas, designer of the Pi board, and his enthusiasm for his children to learn – for all children to learn programming – is clear. It’s that enthusiasm, that evangelical ideal to promote coding and education, that runs throughout the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It’s all of this that sets it apart from every other wanna-be Pi board imitator. So, almost two years on, we’re proud to have the Raspberry Pi on the cover again, embracing all the new Linux users it brings and the next generation of programmers.

But it can’t all be Pi for tea; we still have a huge main helping of desktop Linux goodness to tuck in to. We’re very excited about our roundup of VoIP clients, to embrace a world of fully-digital communication. From the now oddly Microsoft-owned Skype to the fantastic Jitsi, instant text, voice and video messaging is a slick and fast Linux affair. We also take a look at how you can get the most from Steam OS, even in this early phase, with the clever Ye Olde Steam OS distro, which enables wider hardware support and even a VM install. Or, if you just fancy a challenge, we take you through setting up your own GIT repository server or, heck, a remote logging server.

With Mint 16 and Fedora 20 on the coverdisc, this is one hearty FOSS banquet, so enjoy!