How-ToBooting Your PI For The First Time

The first time you boot the Raspberry Pi you'll see a configuration tool called "raspi-config." (If you ever need to revisit this configuration screen again, you can always call the "raspi-config" command from the terminal of your Pi.) While you're there, you'll need to change a few options.

First off, we need to select "expand_rootfs". What this does is expand the installed image to use the maximum available size of your SD card. If you are using a larger card (16GB, say), you'll definitely want to make sure you can use the full capacity, since the install image is only about 2GB.Highlight that "expand_rootfs" option and press Enter. You'll then see the confirmation below, at which point pressing Enter will take you back to the main raspi-config screen.

Next up is the overscan option. If you notice, the screen is not taking up the entire real estate afforded by your monitor; it's best to disable overscan so that you can utilize your monitor or television to its entirety. If your screen looks fine, though, you can skip this step. In any case, assuming you do go through with this step, select "overscan" and press Enter.Here you get the option to disable or enable. If you ever upgrade to a new monitor or television you may need to re-enable overscan at a later point.

After that quick step, now we want to verify our keyboard settings. If you are in America you want to change this; if you're in Great Britain these are safe to leave at the standard config.Select "configure_keyboard" and press Enter. Then you'll be presented with a very long list of keyboard options. If you know your keyboard setup, select it in the list, otherwise you'll be fine with the default 105-key option.

After selecting your keyboard type, you'll need to specify the layout. There's a good chance you want a different layout than English (UK), so choose "Other" and select the most appropriate option.

You'll then be asked about modifier keys -- just choose the default here, as well as "No compose key" on the next screen. If later you find you need a compose key to create alternative characters, you can return to this configuration screen by running "raspi-config".The last option you'll need to set in the Keyboard configuration is the ALT / CTRL / BACKSPACE feature to kill X11. We recommend you enable this, so that in case your GUI ever crashes you can safely kill it without rebooting.Back at the main menu, the next step is to set a user password.

Select "change_pass" and press Enter. After a confirmation screen, you'll be prompted to choose a new UNIX user password.

Almost done now. Let's set your "locale," which is the general character set used by your native language. Again, if you don't live in Great Britain, you'll want to change this to your local character set. If you're in the good ol' US of A, you want en_US.UTF-8. Scroll down to your locale of choice, and de-select the en_GB option on your way. In our case, we'll be enabling en_US.UTF-8

The next dialogue window will ask you to choose a default locale, select the locale you just chose on the previous screen and press Enter.Back on raspi-config's main menu, set the appropriate timezone by selecting -- you guessed it -- the "change_timezone" option. You'll be presented with a list of regions first.

The next dialogue will show you a list of zones within that region. We think you know what to do here.

Back at the main setup, you can safely ignore the remaining options for now and select "Finish." You'll be prompted to reboot to make changes; do so. Once your system is back online, you'll get a login prompt like so:

Your login is "pi" and the password will be what you set it to earlier.USING YOUR RASPBERRY PINow that you've logged in to your freshly baked Raspberry Pi, the first thing you want to do is type "startx" to get your GUI environment loaded, which from here on out we'll refer to as your Window Manager.

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