Raspberry Pi A, User Manual, Page: 52 / 314

P A R T I
C O N N E C T I N G T H E B O A R D
36
First, you’ll need to decide which Linux distribution you would like to use with your Raspberry
Pi. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Don’t worry if you change your mind later
and want to try a different version of Linux: an SD card can be flashed again with a new oper-
ating system at any point, and if you choose you can have multiple cards each with a differ-
ent operating system installed.
The most up-to-date list of Linux releases compatible with the Pi is available from the
Raspberry Pi website at
http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
.
The Foundation provides BitTorrent links for each distribution. These are small files that can
be used with BitTorrent software to download the files from other users. Using these links is
an efficient and fast way to distribute large files, and keeps the Foundation’s download serv-
ers from becoming overloaded.
To use a BitTorrent link, you’ll need to have a compatible
client
installed. If you don’t already have
a BitTorrent client installed, download one and install it before trying to download the Raspberry
Pi Linux distribution. One client for Windows, OS X and Linux is µTorrent, available from
http://www.utorrent.com/downloads
.
Which distribution you choose to download is up to you. Instructions in the rest of the book will
be based on the Raspbian Raspberry Pi distribution, a good choice for beginners. Where possible,
we’ll give you instructions for other distributions as well.
Linux distributions for the Raspberry Pi are provided as a single image file , compressed to make it
faster to download. Once you’ve downloaded the Zip archive (a compressed file, which takes less
time to download than the uncompressed files would) for your chosen distribution, you’ll need to
decompress it somewhere on your system. In most operating systems, you can simply double-
click the file to open it, and then choose Extract or Unzip to retrieve the contents.
After you’ve decompressed the archive, you’ll end up with two separate files. The file ending in
sha1
is a hash , which can be used to verify that the download hasn’t been corrupted in transit.
The file ending in
img
contains an exact copy of an SD card set up by the distribution’s creators in
a way that the Raspberry Pi understands. This is the file that needs to be flashed to the SD card.
WARNING
In the following instructions, you’ll be using a software utility called
dd
. Used incorrectly,
dd
will happily write the image to your main hard drive, erasing your operating system and all
your stored data. Make sure you read the instructions in each section thoroughly and note the
device address of your SD card carefully. Read twice, write once!