Klosowski Thorin. - Idiots Guides: Raspberry Pi

No one likes a know-it-all. Most of us realize theres no such thinghow could there be? The world is far too complicated for someone to understand everything there is to know. So when you come across a know-it-all, you smile to yourself as they ramble on because you know better.

You understand that the quest for knowledge is a never-ending one, and youre okay with that. You have no desire to know everything, just the next thing. You know what you dont know, youre confident enough to admit it, and youre motivated to do something about it.

At Idiots Guides, we, too, know what we dont know, and we make it our business to find out. We find really smart people who are experts in their fields and then we roll up our sleeves and get to work, asking lots of questions and thinking long and hard about how best to pass along their knowledge to you in the easiest, most-accessible way possible.

After all, thats our promiseto make whatever you want to learn As Easy as It Gets. That means giving you a well-organized design that seamlessly and effortlessly guides you from page to page, topic to topic. It means controlling the pace youre asked to absorb new informationnot too much at once but just what you need to know right now. It means giving you a clear progression from easy to more difficult. It means giving you more instructional steps wherever necessary to really explain the details. And it means giving you fewer words and more illustrations wherever its better to show rather than tell.

So here you are, at the start of something new. The next chapter in your quest. It can be an intimidating place to be, but youve been here before and so have we. Clear your mind and turn the page. By the end of this book, you wont be a know-it-all, but your world will be a little less complicated than it was before. And well be sure your journey is as easy as it gets.

Mike Sanders
Publisher, Idiots Guides

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eISBN: 9781615647798
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2014957361

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Contents

Introduction

For such a small computer, the Raspberry Pi has made a big impact since its initial release in 2012. Priced at just $35 ($20 for the Model A+), the credit cardsized computer is an easily customizable, affordable computer and also has been used for countless creative projects by do-it-yourselfers. The Raspberry Pi is simple to use, its open source, and it can be manipulated to do all sorts of different things. At a glance, its just an inexpensive computer that runs an operating system based on Linux, but its truly so much more.

The Raspberry Pi was initially created as a fun and inexpensive educational tool to get kids interested in computer programming. The setup process alonegetting this basic computer hooked up to peripherals, the internet, and powerteaches you a bit of programming, and the fact that its a little difficult to use at first means you learn some basic computer-related skills by just getting it to turn on. Over time, the most popular operating system for the Raspberry Pi, Raspbian, has expanded to include a massive toolkit of software that helps further teach programming and a basic understanding of computer science.