Linux Tutorials on the topic “raspbian”

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What is Raspbian?

Raspbian is a highly specialized GNU/Linux distribution made by a community of enthusiasts exclusively for the popular Raspberry Pi single board, pocket size computer. As the hardware capabilities of the small Raspberry Pi are quite limited (750Mhz single core, 512mb RAM) it is critical for Raspbian to be able to run efficiently and allow users to browse the internet and watch HD movies even at such a low processing power. Thankfully, Raspbian thrives in the small ARM processor delivering commendable performance and adequate speeds for the common day to day tasks of the modern user.

 

Why choose Raspbian?

While Raspberry Pi owners have a range of available operating system choices that can run on their board, Raspbian is maybe the most notable featuring over 35000 software packages with which you can expand the abilities of your system and basically do more with the little Raspberry. Those pre-compiled packages are stored in a dedicated repository and their number is growing by the day. The Linux kernel that is used in the Raspbian is not just a standard kernel striped out of the unnecessary modules, but is also optimized for high performance at low specs.

Based on Debian, Raspbian boasts great stability and system operation rigidness no matter the extensive experimentation that may be subjected to because of the testing nature of the hardware. That said, it is also very important that users who want to experiment will find Debian's rich documentation quite helpful in their endeavors.

Although Raspbian was made for use with Raspberry Pi, it can theoretically (and practically) run seamlessly in any ARMv6 and v7 device. Some examples include the somewhat more powerful Banana Pi, Cubietruck, Radxa Rock and the BeagleBoard. Raspbian is quite easy to install using a hacked version of the Debian installer. There are SD card images and also on-board images available for download, so users may choose where they want their system to run from. What takes the cake of options is the fact that Raspbian also comes in even more “specialized” versions that feature alternative desktop environments (MATE), a set of educational applications, a striped out version that only offers a basic system upon which the users may build their own, and finally an image that runs the superlight Razor Qt desktop environment.

 

HowToForge and Raspbian

HowToForge acknowledges the rising movement as well as the importance of Linux based single board units, and thus we already have a Raspbian dedicated section in our website. The material is not exactly overwhelming yet, but we are actively working on pullulating our tutorials. For the time being, you can find tutorials on how to benchmark your Raspberry Pi, how to setup a backup server for Linux and Windows systems and how to install Raspbian of course! If you are seeking for more, you can always pay our forums a visit and ask our friendly community of experts for their advice on any Raspberry related issue. Raspberry Pi enthusiasts are already more than you may think.