As a relative newcomer I was wondering how the Endpoint Domino board compares with other offerings, like for example a Raspberry Pi?
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I was waiting for someone to ask this question. 
Simple answer… Raspberry Pi is a general purpose Linux personal computer with a graphical desktop. Endpoint, in its current state, is an embedded platform with a Linux kernel, and a great set of libraries.
But given Endpoint’s Linux base, it could go in many directions. I doubt it will ever try to compete with Raspberry Pi for a generic graphic desktop.
There are many questions, about comparative performance, between the two platforms, which I am not prepared to answer.
I think it will be easier to answer your question in 6 to 12 months.
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Oh yeah RPI and other Linux boards can run .NET. Have you tried it? Can you please share share how it went? 
Can you reduce boot time on any Linux system? Yes if you put the effort into it (months in our case) and can you put .NET on any Linux board, with debugging? Yes but not easily. Can you build libraries to handle hardware the way we do? Yes if you have years of experience.
We prefer to not call endpoint a Linux board. This is where the confusion can happen.
Did I help or confuse everyone? 
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Nope.
I viewed this question not as which is better but rather how do they differ. The better question is what are the use cases for each device.
I know Gus does not like to talk about the Linux base, but think about all the things the future could bring us.
I am not a fan of Linux. I have used it in a few small projects and one massive project. To me, the fact that Endpoint has a OS is important.
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If you want to blink an led as hobby project, the result is not much different between Endpoint and RP, except Endpoint can boot within few seconds.
But if you want PWM, SPI, CAN, DigitalSignal… more than or different to what RP supports, you may see some obstacles. Big or small obstacles depend on how much you know about them, and how much you like to deal with them.
In my opinion, if I am going to build something like a media streaming box, 64 bit…I am sure RP is the choice.
For Pin level control, data bus, full debug support… I would go with Endpoint. I don’t want to deal with the surprise obstacles above. I need time to focus on the project instead of fixing the issues that I am not familiar with.
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Thanks, I did some digging too and clearly the Raspberry Pi doesn’t have MCU peripherals, everything is some little ad-on boards except for primitive GPIO.
I’ve also never been a fan of Linux or Unix or any of the derivatives, I spent many years with my head inside operating systems and frankly these Unix derivatives are deficient in numerous areas.
I used to work a great deal on VOS, the OS created by Stratus Computer in the early 1980s. That was derived from Multics and had many innovations not seen in Unix/Linux.
Stratus by the way might be of some interest to folks here, they design computers that have duplicated lockstep hardware where a CPU, Memory board or IO board can fail with zero impact on the system, applications know nothing about it.
Here’s how that company got started: Team Foster - Stratus Computer truly interesting computer history.
Here’s an interview too with the late Bob Freiburghouse, famed compiler innovator and the architect of VOS, he tried to hire Dave Cutler to develop VOS but Microsoft had already hired him.
Foster and Freiburghouse along with hardware designer Gardner Hendrie who was enticed from Data General, founded the company, I worked with their systems in financial markets for many years.
Here’s just one tiny detail where VOS was slicker than Unix - pathnames:
Here’s a VOS pathname from a device to some file in a folder:
#disk_01>System>Utilities>Source>find_files>filters.txt
relative paths were simple and elegant too, if you were logged in and situated in that “find_files” directory and wanted to display a file in another utility folder, you might type:
display <clean_files>startup.c
enough, I don’t want to digress too much!
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From experience, people who worked with Stratus Computers never stop talking about them…
It is very rare for me to encounter anyone who worked on that system these days. I was a consultant for some years in London when the company was the darling of the securities mission critical world, it was a good time but I no longer work with VOS. No idea just how relevant Stratus is these days with cloud and all sorts of high availability cloud options.
IMO: Gus wrapped all in a single sentence
Can you reduce boot time on any Linux system? Yes if you put the effort into it (months in our case)
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While not as good as Endpoint, a Raspberry Pi 5 booting off a M.2 NMVE SSD is fast.
The only Pi 5/NMVE I am using has the graphical desktop, Samba and XRDP running. I suspect booting to a command line only would be very fast.
For sure my comment was contextually obtuse
-My comment was based on my interpretation of Gus’s comment
-To (me) the implied context was:
–Linux hosts many [daemons, services, processes, threads]
----Filtering (disabling) such takes a considerable amount of time to fine-tune
------The end resultant after all such fine-tuning is:
-1]: (primary) Objective: Not have a Linux [daemon, service, process, thread], rope burn developer(s) in quests to build near real-time application(s)
-2]: (secondary) and most likely not an Objective: Disabling Linux [daemons, services, processes, threads], (ALSO) decreases boot time
I see no support for tape drives, is this something planned for by the team? a real OS is always booted from tape:
I assume you mean paper tape?
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