The Raspberry Pi is an educational device. It was built because the graduates coming into companies were no longer being trained in computing properly. They built the Raspberry Pi as a really cheap computer so it could be used in schools. Performance wasn't really a consideration, price was.

Turns out it was a roaring success and they've sold millions of them now. They've also achieved their mission of turning the UK education system around. They're now teaching computer science again. Even the BBC have got in on the action, every year 7 is being given a micro:bit, which is another educational device.

There's a whole stack of OSs available for it now. Granted many of these are Linux based but there's also RiscOS, BSD, NetBSD and even a version of Windows 10. Interestingly there seem to be quite a few special purpose OSs for media centres, audio players, retro gaming and such like.

As for MorphOS...

No, it's not the fastest machine out there (RPi 3 is probably around a Peg G4 / low end G5) but there are 5 million of them out there.
A lot of those using them are interested in tinkering with computers and operating systems. A version for the RPi could get thousands of new users on board. New users means new developers, and that could inject a whole new life into the community.

It is essentially the perfect board to port to because it's already got exactly the right sort of users. Exactly the right sort of people who'd be interested in MorphOS. More importantly, there'll be a lot of young people, which you need if you want to keep MorphOS going over the long term.

Interestingly a lot of the people using PRi and other small boards don't care about performance. I was reading the article comparing a bunch or boards (linked in this thread) and part of it asked about the things the users look for in little boards. IIRC performance was about 10th! I guess if you need performance you just use a PC or Mac, but for most users now even low end boards are good enough.

This poses an interesting question. Is the priority just performance, or is it about getting more users.
If the priority is performance, what is it needed for?




BTW This thread is very well timed, I just got a Raspberry Pi 3 today so I've been reading up on this stuff!