I actually appreciate this advice. As a slow learner I'm having a blast 
programming a standard terminal interface to interact with the Arduino 
Uno. I looked at other terminal programs like "picocom" and "cutecom" 
(which is cute) besides the over-rated minicom. Started a terminal 
program with FreePascal, but find tcl/tk and iWidgets and expect are 
perfect. I use opensuse and iceWM with Nedit.

The Arduino Uno is exactly a slave terminal from the olden days, with a 
Linux PC / USB connection better than a supercomputer. The Raspberry Pi 
is over my head or out of my league.

This is an interesting and impressive evolution in hardware. But why 
gunk it up with software before you know anything about it? DOS was fun, 
too.

I'm not a minimalist Linux user, but I don't like fat operating systems 
either. So I appreciate suggestions beyond opensuse (which I've been 
very happy with since SuSE 6.1).

The one time I tried using Ubuntu, showing some engineer kids Linux, it 
really disappointed me as a Windows wannabe. It blew my chance to show 
some good kids what Linux was.

Jason Hsu wrote:
> It sounds great except for the inclusion of Ubuntu.  This is a double-whammy.  First, there is the user-unfriendly Unity interface.  Second, I'm not sure 1 GB of memory is enough for Ubuntu, as it's now as heavy as Windows 7 or Windows Vista.  Debian with 256 MB of memory (the Raspberry Pi setup) can smoke Ubuntu with 1 GB of memory.
>
> If this $99 supercomputer came with something lighter, it would be a sure winner.  Linux Mint Debian Edition, Snowlinux 4 Glacier, antiX Linux, and Puppy Linux prove that a polished user-friendly interface doesn't require the bloat of Ubuntu.
>
> On Fri, 7 Jun 2013 23:06:09 -0500 (CDT)
> Mike Miller<mbmiller+l at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> What do you think of this?...
>>
>>
>> http://www.geek.com/chips/a-99-linux-supercomputer-has-been-built-will-ship-this-summer-1552343/
>>