Getting Up to No Good
Welcome, fellow pranksters and mischief-makers, to the beginning of your journey
towards a stealthier lifestyle. Naturally, you're all anxious to get started with this
cool stuff, so we'll only devote this first, short chapter to the basic steps you need
to get your Raspberry Pi up and running.
First we'll get to know the hardware a little better, and then we'll go through the
installation and configuration of the Raspbian operating system.
At the end of this chapter you should be able to connect to your Raspberry Pi over
the network and be up-to-date with the latest and greatest software for your Pi.
A brief history lesson on the Pi
The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized computer created by the non-profit
Raspberry Pi Foundation in the UK. It all started when a chap named Eben Upton
(now an employee at Broadcom) got together with his colleagues at the University of
Cambridge's computer laboratory, to discuss how they could bring back the kind of
simple programming and experimentation that was widespread among kids in the
1980s on home computers such as the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64.
After several years of tinkering, the Foundation came up with two designs for the
Raspberry Pi. The $35 Model B was released first, around February 2012, originally
with 256 MB of RAM. A second revision, with 512 MB of RAM, was announced
in October 2012 and around that time the Pi hardware assembly was moved from
China to Sony's facility in the UK. The $25 Model A is expected to go on sale in the
first quarter of 2013.