What is Raspberry Pi?

Imagine a computer which can carry in your pocket! That’s the simplest introduction for the Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi was originally designed for education by creator Eben Upton. His main aim was to build a low-cost device which can use to improve programming skills and hardware skills of students. Raspberry Pi is slower than a laptop or a desktop computer but it can do pretty amazing stuff.

Except the primary chip of the Raspberry Pi(by Broadcom) all the other things in Raspberry Pi is open hardware. In modern day raspberry pi is used to build many more devices which falls into Internet of Things category. Prototyping
these IOT projects with Raspberry Pi has become very popular because of the cost and mobility.

Picture of a Raspberry Pi 3

Different types of Raspberry Pi boards

A comparison chart can be found in the following link.

http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/raspberrypi-models-comparison

Raspberry Pi 3 is the most powerful Rpi up to now and the latest raspberry pi release is the Raspberry Pi Zero W.

Operating Systems that can be installed in the Raspberry Pi

• Android (RTAndroid)
• Angstrom Linux
• Arch Linux ARM
• Chromium OS
• Debian ARM
• Fedora ARM Pi 2/3 only.
• Fedberry
• FreeBSD
• Gentoo
• IPFire
• Kali Linux
• LibreELEC
• Meego MER + XBMC
• Nard SDK
• NetBSD
• OpenELEC + XBMC
• OpenWrt
• OSMC
• PiBang
• Pidora
• PwnPi
• QtonPi
• Plan 9
• Raspbian
• Raspbmc
• RaspBSD
• RetroPie
• Risc OS
• Slackware ARM
• SliTaz
• Ubuntu Mate
• Void Linux
• Windows 10 IoT Core

A beginner can install raspberry pi operating system by using NOOBS. NOOBS is an easy operating system installer which contains Raspbian. It also provides a selection of alternative operating systems which are then downloaded from the internet and installed.

Where you can learn more on Raspberry Pi?

• Explore the seven favourite Raspbery Pi projects from Ruth Suehle, author of the book Raspberry Pi Hacks.
• Read about Matt Jadud’s experience learning and using the Occidentalis Linux distribution on his Raspberry Pi.
• Hear from Luis Ibáñez about Coder, a project from Google to use the Raspberry Pi to teach web programming to beginners and kids.
• Learn how SUNY Albany is using the Raspberry Pi as an alternative to textbooks for teaching college students.
• Learn how National Geographic Explorers are bringing the Raspberry Pi to the wilderness to gather data for conservation.

What I recommend to buy

It is always good to go with the latest available RPi because it has the latest features available. For an example, I am using a Raspberry Pi 3 because it has the built in WI-Fi and Bluetooth. So that I don’t need to pay more on Wi-Fi adapters or Bluetooth Adapters. If your major concern is on the mobility of the device go with the Raspberry Pi Zero W.

Start doing awesome things with Raspbeery Pi. 🙂 Trust me you will fall in love with Raspberry Pi. 😀