Raspberry Pi Geek 01

Raspberry Pi users think small and dream big, imagining ingenious projects that put the unobtrusive Raspberry Pi to work on practical problems. And along the way, they learn things you don't ever discover by pointing and clicking with a smartphone or MacBook.

All these ISOs on a single disc:

• Raspbian "wheezy" [download latest version]
• Arch Linux ARM [download latest version]
• OpenELEC-RPi [download latest version]
• RISC OS [download latest version]
• PiMAME [download]
• Raspbmc [download latest version]
• Bodhi Pi
• PiBang

The Raspberry Pi is small and economical but also fairly limited for resources. A few targeted tuning steps might help you gain better performance.

Several operating systems are designed to run on the Raspberry Pi. We look at some leading alternatives.

Keep an eye on your Raspberry Pi-based server with these nifty monitoring applications.

As the Raspberry Pi finds its way onto more and more workbenches, new opportunities arise not only to transfer data from electronic projects to a local network or the Internet but also to provide options for feedback and control.

A few months ago, the Raspbian distribution was extended to include an app store. Although the Pi Store has a few minor weaknesses, it could be a big part of future Raspberry Pi development.

A Raspberry Pi, an Arduino, a flow sensor, a webcam with a microphone, several Python scripts, and speech recognition tools provide an affordable health monitoring system for seniors based on water consumption.

Pulling the plug on your Pi without an orderly shutdown can corrupt the SD card. Also, many users prefer a convenient switch to clicking icons and entering shutdown commands. We show you some options for starting, stopping, and powering down.

Use a small and unobtrusive Raspberry Pi to convert your legacy USB printer to a new wireless network printer system.