Raspberry Pi Forums

Hello,

I am completely new to Raspberry Pi. I have ordered one and I am hoping that I will learn a lot about computing and programming with it. I heard it was aimed at getting children and students back into enjoying computer science and programming. As a 35 year old with little experience of any of that I thought that the Raspberry Pi would be a good place to start. However, just looking at the FAQ on the Raspian website I am already confused...

Raspbian is an unofficial port of Debian Wheezy armhf with compilation settings adjusted to produce optimized "hard float" code that will run on the Raspberry Pi. This should provide significantly faster performance for applications that make heavy use of floating point arithmetic operations.

The port is necessary because the official Debian Wheezy armhf release is compatible only with versions of the ARM architecture later than the one used on the Raspberry Pi (ARMv7-A CPUs and higher, vs the Raspberry Pi's ARMv6 CPU).

Should I understand all of this? Do children understand this? Is there a glossary somewhere? A complete beginner's guide I can purchase or download? Should I give up now and go back to reading Janet and John?

Thanks for any advice you can give me.

Matt

No they shouldn't need to.
These comments are for current developers of software for the PI.
As far as kids should be concerned the PI i simply a "computer", and as such has certain capabilities, they do not all have to know at the beginning. Later they may indeed learn the difference between floating point calculations implemented in software, and those in hardware.
AFAIK a curriculum etc for children/students/beginners is still being worked on for the "educational release" of the PI.

Someday raspberrypi will release a beginners guide, for now just ignore that.
for now all you need to do is get "2012-08-16-wheezy-raspbian" onto an SD card (unless you orderd an SD card with the OS pre installed)

For someone just getting started, then the MagPi magazine (http://www.themagpi.com/) is an excellent resource.

mhogg77 wrote:Should I understand all of this? Do children understand this? Is there a glossary somewhere? A complete beginner's guide I can purchase or download? Should I give up now and go back to reading Janet and John?

In order:
No
no
probably
probably
your choice, but although Janet and John can be interesting, learning about computing is likely to be more rewarding. Intensely, hair-tearingly frustrating, and at times wrist-slittingly depressing, but in the end rewarding.

I was told, when looking for text-books, to look at the first page. If that's understandable, look at the last page. If that doesn't make sense, then buy the book.
Unfortunately the FAQ and the wiki mix page one stuff with page 3000 stuff, so don't expect to understand all of even the first page!

This seems to be a duplicate of
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 63&t=15665
which confused me!

Thank you very much elatllat and itimpi!

Is MagPi available for download only, or is it available in the shops?

Thanks again.

Thank you very much for your help mahjongg and Burngate.

mhogg77 wrote:Is MagPi available for download only, or is it available in the shops?

Thanks again.

Currently it is download only. I believe that making print editions available is under investigation although I have no idea of the status.

I've just merged the two threads.

I'd also recommend you buy Eben and Gareth's book, which is released in September in its full form but is also available now as a download in a short form (which misses a lot of content out; it'll get you set up, but you may want to wait for the long version); it's a very comprehensive beginner's guide, from setting the thing up, to learning to program on it, using it as a media platform and using it in robotics and other electronics.

See http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/tag ... spberry-pi <- shortened version of the book and http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1498 <- long version, which is currently available for preorder.

As above magpi is great, also if you have a kindle or smartphone/tablet with the Kindle app "meet the raspberry pi" is well worth getting.

Navigating the FAQs wiki and forum may be a. It disjointed at the moment as things are new but if you take your time you'll find what you need.

Should I understand all of this? Do children understand this? Is there a glossary somewhere? A complete beginner's guide I can purchase or download? Should I give up now and go back to reading Janet and John?

No offense to anyone here, but I'm a relatively young person and to my understanding, here are my answers:
Maybe, depending on what you know
Maybe, depending on what you know
Yes, probably in the MagPi
No, I don't think so, but you should read the MagPi
To be honest, I don't know what Janet and John is, but if it is a kid's book, then I should think not.

go to the maker of DouDouLinux and ask them kindly to make a image for a Raspberry Pi SD Card.

DouDouLinux is a Distribution for 2-12 year old children.

If there are more people asking for a R_Pi Version of DouDou it would get faster to get on for the community.
Some ARM Build for Genesi Smartbook are available, and R_pi is in some planning state ...

mhogg77 wrote:Hello,

I am completely new to Raspberry Pi. I have ordered one and I am hoping that I will learn a lot about computing and programming with it. I heard it was aimed at getting children and students back into enjoying computer science and programming. As a 35 year old with little experience of any of that I thought that the Raspberry Pi would be a good place to start. However, just looking at the FAQ on the Raspian website I am already confused...

Raspbian is an unofficial port of Debian Wheezy armhf with compilation settings adjusted to produce optimized "hard float" code that will run on the Raspberry Pi. This should provide significantly faster performance for applications that make heavy use of floating point arithmetic operations.

The port is necessary because the official Debian Wheezy armhf release is compatible only with versions of the ARM architecture later than the one used on the Raspberry Pi (ARMv7-A CPUs and higher, vs the Raspberry Pi's ARMv6 CPU).

Should I understand all of this? Do children understand this? Is there a glossary somewhere? A complete beginner's guide I can purchase or download? Should I give up now and go back to reading Janet and John?

Thanks for any advice you can give me.

Matt

While the general comments are correct...you don't need to understand that, and kids likely will not, I will attempt to "unpack" some of it for you...

PCs generally use processor chips called "x86", for a variety of 'x'. IT start with IBM's use of Intel's 8088 processor, which was variant of the 8086...followed by 80186, 80286 (IBM AT), 80386, 80486, 80586 aka "Pentium" and so on through a variety of names.

By contrast, ARM is a different processor design primarily targeted at low power (like cell phones) applications and the designs are licensed to other companies to modify and manufacture.

Thus, programs compiled to run on x86 systems will not run directly on ARM systems.

"Armhf" is a reference to how "floating point arithmetic" is handled by programs. "Floating point" is a computers version of scientific notation, the stuff expressed n.nnnn*10^mm, e.g. 6.026*10^23... Avogadro's number. The "hf" part means that this version of the software uses portions of the processor chip that do floating point arithmetic directly with hardware instructions (built into the chip) rather that complex programming in software. Hardware execution is *much* faster than software execution, and floating point is used in many aspects of computer, but especially when doing graphical display (e.g. a GUI or "windowed" display).

Debian is a company that distributes versions of the Linux operating system under that name, thus "Debian Linux" as opposed to--say--"Redhat Linux" or "SuSE Linux". "Wheezy" (and "Squeeze") are particular, specific version of Debian Linux. "Raspbian" is variant of "Debian Wheezy" specially tuned for the Raspberry Pi.

You will also see specific versions--distributions--of Liunx referred to as "distros" as a shorthand means of reference.

Hope that helps (and that I haven't given anything particularly erroneous in my effort to unpack the jargon).

I would strongly encourage you to watch the excellent series of videos that Foundation student volunteer Liam Fraser has produced (while working hard in school and administering Foundation servers!) which you can find here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/RaspberryPiTutorials

Skip tutorials 1 and 2 as those only apply to running the original OS release in a software emulator on a PC. Start with tutorial 3 as that gets one started on how to edit files and develop/build simple Python demo software.

i like also this one very much.

very good tutorials

http://www.youtube.com/user/RaspberryPiBeginners