Question 1.8: Writing an SD Card Manually (Linux) The Raspberry Pi is not ......
Writing an SD Card Manually (Linux)
The Raspberry Pi is not generally supplied with an operating system. You want to use a Linux PC to write an operating system distribution onto an SD card.
Download an iso disk image for the distribution that you have selected (see Recipe 1.4). Then use the Ubuntu ImageWriter tool to put it onto an SD card. For other Linux distributions, consider using NOOBS (Recipe 1.5).
First, install the ImageWriter tool by opening a Terminal session and entering the following command:
| $ sudo apt-get install usb-imagewriter |
This tool has a nice user interface (Figure 1-7).
Navigate to wherever you downloaded the iso file in the Write Image section, select the SD card from the “to” drop-down, and after checking that you have definitely selected the SD card and not some other disk drive, click “Write to Device.”
Discussion
You can also buy preformatted SD cards with a distribution already installed on them. However, these are sometimes not the latest version, so it is a good idea to know how to write your own SD cards.
When selecting an SD card to write to, always select one that is at least 4 GB.
See Also
See also Recipe 1.5 for how to write an SD card image by using NOOBS.
More details and options for writing an SD card are available at http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup.
