Setting Up Your PI

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This post will take you through configuring your pi for the first time

What you should have:

  • Raspberry Pi Computer
  • Micro SD card (at least 8gb of storage)
  • Monitor with HDMI interface or necessary adapter
  • Keyboard
  • Mouse

The operating system that runs on the pi must be flashed on the memory card though its also possible to buy a memory card that already has it preinstalled. For the case of this tutorial, we are going to take the other alternative of flashing and setting it up ourselves since its the cheaper option.

Using a different computer, download Raspbian operating system which is the official OS for the pi. There exists different variants depending on your preferred choice, we are choosing the one that comes with the recommended software. Download Etcher and follow instructions to flash the downloaded image to micro sd card.

Etcher

Once the flashing has completed, insert the sd card in the PI alongside other attachments, the power adapter should be inserted last and let the pi power up for the first time. Once it is powered up, a dialog box showing language preferences and passwords will be shown that will enable users customize their preferences

Once setup completes, connect your pi to internet either using wifi or ethernet to have it update and upgrade current software packages using the terminal commands below

CTRL+ALT+T will open the terminal or you can use the start menu

To update software packages use: sudo apt update

To upgrade software packages use: sudo apt upgrade

If your OS doesn’t have git version control preinstalled use: sudo apt-get install git

Get accustomed to the pi menus before we dive into setting up various tools for web development

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