Page 23 - Raspberry Pi as a Foundation for Boosting Computer and Technology Literacy

2 Raspberry Pi OS 2

Every computer needs an operating system and a Raspberry Pi is no
different. The guidelines below refer to any Raspberry Pi except Rasp-
berry Pi Pico, a microcontroller with a completely different set-up pro-
cess. There are two ways in which one can install the OS on a Raspberry
Pi:
1. A headless install (when you have no monitor or keyboard and
mouse connected to a Raspberry Pi)
2. Install Raspberry Pi OS using Raspberry Pi Imager to a microSD
card on a computer with an SD card reader – this is the quickest
way.

There are many Raspberry Pi operating systems available in addition
to the official OS. Raspbian was developed by Mike Thompson and Pe-
ter Green, based on the Linux distribution Debian. The initial version
was released in June 2012, and there are more than 5,000 packages
available for easy installation on the Raspberry Pi, as can be seen here
 Welcome to Raspbian.
There is also a Raspberry Pi distribution by  Kali Linux . If Raspbi-
an is especially beginner-friendly, Kali is primarily used for extensive
security and penetration testing of computer systems and networks
as it contains more than 600 tools. Kali is suitable for computer and
network security tests, but less suitable for Linux beginners. Pidora
( pidora.ca) is another OS, based on the Linux distribution by Fedora.
One of its main features is headless mode, which as you already know
by now, allows one to access the microcomputer without a monitor.
Again, it may not be the best choice for beginners. Microsoft launched
its first OS for IoT devices in 2015 (the time when Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
reigned). More about the development and deployment of applications
to Windows IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 2 can be found here:  learn
.microsoft.com.

23