New Raspberry Pi Owner Questions

[Usman2308]

Hi all,

I have recently purchased a Raspberry Pi, the model with 512mb RAM. I purchased a bundle that included the software already on the SD Card.

So I ran the command to update the firmware which I found in another thread,

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sudo apt-get upgrade

This updated my firmware.

Now I'm a bit confused as to what the name of this OS is running (sounds really stupid). If I run the command,

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uname -a

, i get the following output -

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Linux raspberrypi 3.2.27+ #160 PREEMPT Mon Sep 17 23:18:42 BST armv6l GNU/Linux

Can someone tell me if I am using the 'beginner' version of the OS and is it the latest? If I run the first command again, There doesn't seem to be any updates found, so I assume that it has been updated.

Finally, I noticed that launching some programs such as the web browser, there is always a type of delay/sluggish feel. I just wanted to know if this is normal or incase there is something wrong with my Pi.

Any other pointers/tips that I should either in general or for the 512mb version would be appreciated.
Let me know if you need anymore information.

I'm still getting to grips with it and it's fun so far.

Thanks for reading,

Usman

[david451]

evining us man! I new to this to so I cant help u much but if you got the preloaded card like i did i researched a bit and i think in the terminal you could have just put in apt-get update or you can use upgrade. but do this in the "root terminal" Let me ask you a question do you have any sound. I have none. but as you said this is going to be a experience

[Vindicator]

when you update your card you need to use commands in a specific order.
Before you do this you will need to install Rpi-Update.
Rpi update is not contained in the image so you need to install this from git hub I have the link for the US github so you might search for the link nearest your location.

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https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/blob/master/README.md

Then I suggest you update/upgrade following these steps.

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sudo apt-get update 

should be used first.
the next step will ask you for a Y/n answer y and hit enter.

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sudo apt-get upgrade

should be used for the second step of the upgrade.

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sudo rpi-update

this last step upgraded your firmware and when you reboot and login you should see a #250 preempt.
Also remember to do a proper shutdown using a halt command or shutdown command so that corruption of the SD card is avoided.
I use this command

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sudo shutdown -h now

yes the sluggishness going into the browser is normal
Turbo mode helps some and arguably a swap file can also help(swap file conversations bring out the beast in some people so I try not to use the four letter word swap to much LOL)

If you are on prempt 160 you are not using your full 512Mb yet so follow the steps above and rerun rpi-config to setup a memory split for your 512Mb Raspi

See other post to help with this last step as I do not have a newer 512Mb Raspi so I would suggest getting the needed info for your board so as to get concise info of how to do this.


Hope this helps

[Vindicator]

BTW you may have to go through the steps a couple of time to get all the way to 250.
I tried it on a spare card and had to do them twice.

[Lob0426]

For whatever reason I had to run rpi-update twice also. On both of the cards I have updated so far. Ran it once and it did not seem to do anything. When I ran it the second time it then said to reboot.

To set the gpu memory split you need to edit your config.txt file.

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sudo nano /boot/config.txt
gpu_mem="the video memory size you want"
gpu_mem=64

then ctrl+X
then Y
then enter
then enter again

Now reboot your RasPi. Now it will always set the GPU memory to 64MB no matter what size the RasPi memory is.

You can also define seperate memory settings for each RasPi memory size

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gpu_mem_256=64
gpu_mem_512=192

These are just examples. You can set them to whatever size you want. When you put that SD card into a 256MB device it will set the gpu memory to 64MB. When you put that SD card into a 512MB device it will set the gpu memory to 192MB.