Raspberry Pi tutorial for beginners

Raspberry Pi is a $35 Single Board computer that has an HDMI output and that runs Linux ( and also Andoroid). It come in two flavors - A and B. We are talking about the variation B which is better of the two and comes with Ethernet, two USB ports and more memory. The version A is cheaper at $25 but comes without Ethernet.

The Ethernet port and the two USB ports come via the SMSC 9512 integred USB Hub and Ethernet chip. In case of type A board, this chip is not populated and hence no Ethernet solution. You still get one direct USB with single hieght USB populated.

When you buy Raspberry Pi, it does not come with power supply and the SD CARD required. The power is supplied to the card through the USB micro connector. It is +5V and you will need a wall mount type supply. If you supply power through your laptop, the power consumtion may exceed the USB's 500 mA limit and may trip.

In this tutorial we would like you to get started with the Raspberri Pi and we will present some sample codes intended for beginners. But before we do that we want to make sure our board is running. Basically we would like to download the SD Card content and program it in the SD card anc check if it is working.

You work on Raspberry Pi you need a Linux System. If you are not familiar with basic Linux, we suggest that you take some basic linux tutorial.

Onc you have the Linux system ready, download the binary and burn the Flash. The procedure has been explained in this youtube that we have un ashamedly reproduced. We dont think we could have done it better.

Now inser the card into the raspberry Pi board and boot the board. You just need to plug in the power supply. Connect the board to your TV with provided HDMI connector. Within few seconds you should see something on the screen.

One thing we missed to tell you is that - you should connect a mouse and a Keyboard on the USB port. When the board boots its stops diplsying some options before proceeding. One of the options that you should select is boot directlt to the desktop. You wll need to reboot the board for it.
Once the board boots fully to desktop you will find some icons. One of the important icons is the Midori, which is the web browser for it. Connect the ethernet and you should be able to see the browser working.

The browser will work seamlessly, however, if you try to run youtube, it will complain about missing missing Flash and HTML5 support. Let us fix that.

Open the LX terminal and give the following set of commands sudo passwd root

This sets the super user password. Remember it. You may need it in future.
su
It will ask for super user password. Now give the following sets of commands.


apt-get install gnash
apt-get update
apt-get install browser-plugin-gnash



Start youtube now. Your youtube should work now.