Raspberry Pi 6 Operating Systems

Like any computer a Raspberry Pi requires an operating system - software that allows you to do computery stuff with the hardware. Phones, laptops and even some washing machines have operating systems.  Windows is an operating system and so is Android, Mac OSX, Linux - there are hundreds of different operating systems out there.

This post describes how to install 6 different operating systems for your Raspberry Pi.

The Raspberry Pi can use a number of the operating systems available - all for free. You just need to download one and write it to an SD Card to plug in to the RPi. The SD Card is much like a hard-disk on a computer, just like Windows is installed on a laptop's hard-drive, Raspberry Pi Operating systems must be installed on the SD Card.

Of all the different Raspberry Pi operating systems I've come across 'Noobs',which is actually 6 different Operating Systems, is by far the most user friendly.  It's also the recommended operating system for the Raspberry Pi. These are the steps you must follow to prepare your SD Card to run your Raspberry Pi by writing Noobs to it.

1) Download Noobs from http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
2) Insert SD Card into the computer (using a card reader if needs be)
3) Format the SD Card
5) Unzip Noobs onto the SD Card
6) Plug SD Card into Raspberry Pi and power on.
7) Follow on screen instructions

It really is that simple. The difficult bit is deciding what to do in this new awesome world of Raspberry *nix power!