Raspberry pi: Up and running with the Raspberry Pi
By Christopher Desouza 17/12/2020
Lets us dive deeper into the world of raspberry pi, first things first , once you have the basic set up ready for the RPI , the next thing to do is set it up with a operating system , as many of you are very well familiar with the Windows and Mac OS , the raspberry pi offers a different alternative , namely LINUX , this os unlike the later is largely Open Sourced which means it can be used or modified freely or you can also use its kernel to create your own OS . There are numerous flavors of the OS ( called Distros or distributions) for the raspberry PI, and the RPI has its own set of Distros to match its hardware. One of the most popular OS's being Raspbian which is offered directly from the manufacturers.
There are other independent vendors who offer their own version of the OS but that requires a few additional steps. These other distros are specifically created for their own unique Purpose some of the examples are Ubuntu offered by Canonical which is commonly used for server purposes and KAli which is used in cybersecurity and comes preloaded with numerous tools in its package.
From our previous post (RaspberryPi-4b Introduction and starters Guide) we have shown the
steps required to get the NOOBS software ( New out of the box Software ) on to your SD
card to install the OS. On startup you will need to configure you PI settings and connect to
the internet either by the included Ethernet or by Wifi , once internet connection is detected it
will be given a choice of Operating systems to install , As a beginner Rasbian is
recommended as it offers a large multipurpose tool set included in its package install. After
completing the boot process your pi will reboot and you will be up and running with the
Raspbian Desktop environment . The installation process is fairly streamlined with the help of
a setup wizard 🧙♂. It will allow you to to set all system configuration parameters ,wifi ,
passwords hostnames etc. If you need to change any of these you may do so in
menu>preferences in the raspberry PI configuration tool .
Now that we have got our desktop environment up and running we can browse through
some of its tools and get familiar with them , for use in electronics we can use some of the
included code editors like thonny python editor and MU , in later tutorials we will use the
Thonny python editor to write basic programs in raspberry pi with the help of the GPIO Zero
library .
Since this is a linux system lets us also get familiar with the command line interface (CLI), it
can be accessed via menu>accessories>Terminal.
A common practice with linux system during first use is to update the packages , as the
bundle may not always have the latest software running this can be done via the below
Command - sudo apt -update.
This will also update the Kernel and Firmware.
Let us use this tool to get familiar with the GPIO pins which we will be using for our future
projects.
In terminal run the command pinout and it will bring up the pinout information on the terminal
window
Another fun command is the cowsay command , let us install it using sudo apt install cowsay.
Once installed you can use the syntax cowsay <yourtext here> to generate an output such
as the one below , there are many such Easter Eggs available in linux and you can explore
these at your leisure.
Finally it is very important that the Raspberry pi like any other system be shutdown properly
so that the filesystem does not get corrupted . If you are using GUI you can shut it down
from the menu options , however since we are in the terminal let us use the command sudo
shutdown -h now to turn the system off.
PS.
● unlike a desktop the only drawback with the pi is the lack of a dedicated on/off switch ,
this can be overcome by using a button on/of switch from the power supply <Buy your switch here>
● Also recommended is the use of a heat sink and/or Fan as the RPI can heat up
significantly , this will help keep it cool and improve performance as well
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