In January, I announced a new IRC channel #debian-lego, for those of us in the Debian and Linux community interested in LEGO, the marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created a wiki page to have a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag hardware::hobby:lego tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to LEGO and Mindstorms:
| scratch | easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up |
| python-nxt | python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot |
| leocad | virtual brick CAD software |
| brickos | alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++ |
| nqc | Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX |
| lnpd | daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS |
| t2n | simple command-line tool for Lego NXT |
| python-nxt-filer | simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT |
| nbc | compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks |
| libnxt | utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX |
Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only available in experimental.
If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux for LEGO designers.