OS for Rasberry Pi

Hi I am not a computer expert but I ordered RP for learning purpose I was just wandering when can you purchase the preloaded OS for RP??

anthonyUK over 14 years ago

There are a number of tutorial video on youtube that explain how to do this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3sr9Nwt3IY&feature=youtube_gdata
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johnbeetem over 14 years ago

At some point pre-loaded GNU/Linux should be available, but for now you must download it yourself and transfer it to an SD card. Here are some starting points:

RasPi official downloads page: http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

RasPi wiki distributions page: http://elinux.org/RPi_Distributions
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e14 Contributor over 14 years ago

Out of the three OS's that are going to be available Debian, Fedora, Arch, which one would be the fastest. I'm hoping Debian will be the distro of choice because I'm most familiar with it, but I'm willing to learn new tricks.
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e14 Contributor over 14 years ago in reply to e14 Contributor

Fedora has been declared the standard distro.
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e14 Contributor over 14 years ago

Thanks!
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e14 Contributor over 14 years ago in reply to e14 Contributor

Joel,
I beleive that you asked which distro would be the fastest. The basic answer would be Arch linux as I have run it before and it carries the least "excess baggage". However, speed is dependent on what environment is used (combination of X-Windows, Window Manager, Desktop Environment, etc). I've looked at some of literature and each of the three listed are making RPi "optimized" (not just compiled for ARM) distros, which means that everything from the parts I mentionned to the applications themselves would be tailored.
In the end, with the price of 2 to 4GB SD cards being rather cheap, you could set up all three and do your own assessment.
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e14 Contributor over 14 years ago in reply to e14 Contributor

Funny you should say that as that is exactly what I intend to do. I already have Debian setup on a 4GB and have purchased a few more for the other ones. I'm sure they will keep streamlining them to perform better.
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e14 Contributor over 14 years ago in reply to e14 Contributor

I also was told Arch was the best choice of the 2 available OS's on the R Pi main page. Looks like they are giving it to us for free? Nice
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