So I heard about Raspberry Pi a long long time ago when I had no real interest in computers or coding, so I pretty much forget of its existence! Now, however, coding and computers is pretty much darn near all I think about and I’m very curious about Raspberry Pi. Not only because it’s tiny and adorable, but because it seems like a really inexpensive way to learn more about computers and code.
However, I am a super newbie when it comes to all of this and have no idea how to get started. I found a couple websites where I could buy a Pi, but I don’t want to buy something then have no idea what to do with it. Essentially I’d like to toy around with linux, maybe run a gameboy emulator, and hopefully get some coding practice in the process!
So I guess the tl;dr version is I want to get started with Raspberry Pi but don’t know any good resources to help me figure out what exactly I need to do to get started! Thanks in advance for any replies
I’ve never really learned much about computers (as in, the hardware architecture) or Linux using a Raspberry Pi. If anything, I found the Raspberry Pi to be a far more frustrating experience than just running Linux on the desktop. That said, the RasPi and other single board computers (SBC) are useful for things like setting up standalone emulators - I have a BananaPi running an ownCloud server in my home. Because it requires a lot of command line work and some setup to use, I’d suggest getting comfortable with Linux long before buying new hardware, and I think the best way to learn to se Linux is to use Linux exclusively for all the little things you do. To that end, it’d be better to download VirtualBox, get a nice version of Linux like Ubuntu or Manjaro, and try to get everything you do in your current OS to work in that virtual machine. Video tutorials on installing Linux in VirtualBox can be found on YouTube (example), as well as videos for just about any question you might have for using Linux of any flavor.
Buying a new, small, and cheap computer seems alluring, but believe me when I say it’s more trouble than it’s worth as a way to learn Linux. It’s more useful for learning to program the things you connect to it via it’s General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins, which output signals to a variety of devices you can buy. It’s great if you want to go that route, but it still takes working knowledge of Linux prior to starting that.
Hello, I believe Raspberry Pi is a inexpensive way to do some projects to learn CLI commands and some Python. Between Raspberry PI 0’s and 2’s I own 7 of them. I used them for all kinds of projects web server, vpn server, pet camera, cloud storage for the house hold. I have used Allo Sparky, PC Duino 4 Nano’s and ASUS Tinker board all fun and easy to learn to from. Depending if you wanted to go headless you can pickup a Raspberry Pi 0-W for around $10 bucks but if you wanted to GUI then get a 2. Go to RaspberryPi.org checkout the projects and YouTube projects as well.
Have Fun!
I had your same problem, then one day i found out i could install on it Retropie and I decided to buy it.
Once you have it tho, as soon as you discover a new thing you can do with it, it will be hard to refrain yourself.
Last but not least: you can always consider to gift your final product : (E.G. give the retropie to your nerd friends, he will love you forever).
And if you think it’s too expensive (we’re talking about 50$), you can grab some friends, share the expense with them, and use your knowledge to create something useful for someone’s birthday
Raspberry Pi’s are a great bit of kit for learning, you can use it as your dedicated dev environment with a lamp server running, you can even run a 64bit Ubuntu Server on there. Great for learning the Google Assistant or Alexa SDK’s. Great for lot’s and lot’s of different projects.
I use mine as my bluetooth speaker system for Spotify with an add-on board (IQAUDIO) and my old stereo speakers.
Last but not least: you can always consider to gift your final product : (E.G. give the retropie to your nerd friends, he will love you forever).
And if you think it’s too expensive (we’re talking about 50$), you can grab some friends, share the expense with them, and use your knowledge to create something useful for someone’s birthday
