Have you ever wanted to make a robot? Have you ever wanted to make a game and then share it with the world? All of these things and more can be done with the Raspberry Pi. A Raspberry Pi can help you gain new computer knowledge. A Raspberry Pi is a $35 computer. It has 512mb of memory, and is about the size of a credit card. It was designed to help teach children how to program, but it can do so much more. The Pi has 2 video outputs, an RCA and HDMI, so you can plug it into your TV or a monitor. The Pi also has 2 USB ports, a 3.5 mm audio jack, and an Ethernet port. Instead of a hard drive, the Raspberry Pi uses an SD card for storage. There is even a GPIO expansion port on the Raspberry Pi to add additional circuit boards to control other devices. Lastly, the Pi uses a micro USB cable for power just like the one on your mobile phone. The Raspberry Pi is an amazing mix of cost efficiency and power.
The Raspberry Pi runs many different kinds of OSes. It runs Linux, Riscos, and XMBCos(OpenElec). Each is designed with a different purpose in mind. The majority of Raspberry Pi users use a flavor of Debian Linux called Raspbian. Raspbian is the operating system the Pi was designed to use. It comes as either network required or network optional download. The Riscos was the first ARM OS. The raspberry Pi is an ARM computer. The Riscos is one of the original operating systems designed for low level ARM computers. It was made available to the Pi to help children become used to alternate operating systems. The XMBCos is designed specifically around media streaming. It turns your Pi into a movie machine. The Pi can output full 1080p HD so it works excellently as a media streaming center. It requires some tweaking, but it is definitely worth saving the 100 dollars as opposed to spending 135$ on an apple TV 3. The Raspberry Pi can be customized to any kind of OS that you need.