In this chapter, you will learn about the Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Raspbian, the official Linux-based operating system of Raspberry Pi.
In this chapter, we will cover:
- The Raspberry Pi
- History of the Raspberry Pi
- The Raspberry Pi hardware
- The Raspbian operating system
- Raspbian components
Despite first impressions, the Raspberry Pi is not a tasty snack. The Raspberry Pi is a small, powerful, and inexpensive single board computer developed over several years by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
If you are a looking for a low cost, small, easy-to-use computer for your next project, or are interested in learning how computers work, then the Raspberry Pi is for you.
The Raspberry Pi was designed as an educational device and was inspired by the success of the BBC Micro for teaching computer programming to a generation. The Raspberry Pi Foundation set out to do the same in today's world, where you don't need to know how to write software to use a computer. At the time of printing, the Raspberry Pi Foundation had shipped over 2.5 million units, and it is safe to say that they have exceeded their expectations!
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a not-for-profit charity and was founded in 2006 by Eben Upton, Rob Mullins, Jack Lang, and Alan Mycroft. The aim of this charity is to promote the study of computer science to a generation that didn't grow up with the BBC Micro or the Commodore 64.
They became concerned about the lack of devices that a hobbyist could use to learn and experiment with. The home computer was often ruled out, as it was so expensive, leaving the hobbyist and children with nothing to develop their skills with.