Raspbian - Element 14 Raspberry Pi User Manual

Raspbian

For the majority of people who use it, Raspbian
will be the graphical face of the Raspberry Pi.
It can be obtained and installed on to an SD card by
following the instructions on the previous page.
Once it's up and running, it's a good
idea to grab the latest versions of all the
software by connecting your Pi to the
internet, opening a terminal and running:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
The killer feature of Raspbian is the
raspi-config program. This will start
automatically the first time you boot,
or can be run at any time by typing
sudo raspi-config in a terminal.
It has got quite a few options,
but the most important are:
expand_rootfs Because of the way
■
Raspbian is installed, it will only create
a 2GB filesystem, so if you have a
larger card, any remaining space
will remain unused. You can use this
option to expand the filesystem to take
advantage of any wasted space.
memory_split The Raspberry Pi uses
■
the same chunk of memory for both
the main processor and the graphics
chip. Using this option, you can change
the amount allocated to each.
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This option can be used on
overscan
■
some displays to make the graphics
expand to fill the whole screen. You can
safely ignore it unless you have problems.
overclock Get an extra 50 per cent
■
performance at no extra cost! See
'Overclocking' for more details.
This rather
boot_behaviour
■
cryptically named option changes
whether your Pi boots into a graphical
environment or a text one.
The installed software has been kept
to a minimum. This is a good idea, but
you may find that tools you use on other
desktop distros aren't there. Fortunately,
as Raspbian is linked to the Debian Armhf
repositories, you have access to more
software than you're ever likely to need. If
you like using a mouse, you may want to
install a graphical package manager. We
recommend Synaptic . To install it, type:
sudo apt-get install synaptic
in a terminal. It can then be opened by
going to the 'LXDE menu > Preferences
> Synaptic Package Manager'. You can
then install any software you want.
Like all good
■
distros, Raspbian
comes with a
selection of addictive
time-wasters. This
is Squirrels from the
Pygames selection.
08/07/2014 14:44