Hello, and welcome to the Raspberry Pi information video. Once you get your Raspberry Pi all hooked up and working, then you will have it boot up and most likely see something like this, where you have a desktop with a big raspberry on the back and several icons.
I’m going to show you one of the icons that is very useful, and this is the terminal. If I double-click on this, the terminal, it will open up a terminal window that is very similar to a DOS prompt, where you can type in commands and those commands are executed. For example, if you wanted to see all of the files that you would have in a particular directory, you can use this command, LS—so it’s LS, and then a space, and then minus L, and then it’ll list all of the files or directories that you might have in the current directory that you’re in. Similar to if you were to open a DOS window and type in DIR or open up your Windows Explorer and see the different files that you would have in a directory. So it’s very similar to that.
Oh, something you might notice when you open up your terminal window, and this is—this might not happen, but on some keyboards you might see this, when I start typing in quotes, I get the “at” sign. When I try to type in a pound sign, which is above the 3, I get this British pound sign. So, this keyboard default is British. And so, what I need to do is I need to modify a file. And in order to do that, I’m going to type in this command SUDO.
So you need to type it in exactly the way I’m telling it, SUDO—S-U-D-O, space, V-I, space, and then the file name. SUDO will make it root, which will give you access to be able to modify it, which is kind of like the admin access. VI is an editor, and the file name is slash etsy slash default slash keyboard. So, I’ll press Enter, and this will open the VI Editor.
The VI Editor is very handy because it is—you can use it on all Linux and Windows systems, so it’s a good thing to know how to use the VI Editor. The VI Editor has two modes. It has an insert mode and a command mode. Currently we are in command mode, when I open it up, so I can use my arrow keys to scroll down to the line I want, which is this one where it says Keyboard Layout. And then I will use my arrow key to move over here.
In command mode, I can delete letters by pressing the X. So, I’m going to put my curser over the GB and press XX, and that will delete the GB. Now, I want to go back into insert mode in order to replace the word—letters GB with US. So, I’m going to type in the I. I don’t see the I, but it just puts me in insert mode. Then I type in US, and now I am in—now I have modified the layout to US.
Now, I need to go back into command mode in order to save and exit. And I do that by pressing Escape. So Escape will put me back into command mode, whereas pressing I will put me into insert mode. So now I’m in command mode because I pressed Escape. In order to save and exit, I need to do a—I need to type in a colon—not the semicolon, but the regular colon—W save Q quit, and I’ll press Enter.
Great. Well, it must have worked. Right? Let’s type in some quotes. Oh, it didn’t work. It didn’t work because I need to reboot. I need to reboot as root, so I’ll type in ____ reboot, and this will take a few minutes while the Raspberry Pi reboots.
Well, our Raspberry Pi has now rebooted, and now we can log in. And you’ll note, when we log in, I’m going to log in with a default, which is Pi for my log-in, and the password is Raspberry. And something that you’ll notice with Linux machines is that when you type in the password, it doesn’t show up. So I type in Raspberry, but it doesn’t look like I’m actually typing any characters on the keyboard, but I actually am. I’m also going to type Start X, and this will load up the graphical interface. You might have something different; it might not do that for you, but this is what my machine looks like.
Once I load it back up again, I’m going to test to see if my keyboard modifications worked. So, I’m going to go back to this terminal, which will open up my terminal again, and I’m going to type in some quotes and the pound sign above the 3, and it looks like it has—by modifying the keyboard layout, now my keyboard is working how I want it to work. I’m going to type in “exit” to remove the terminal window.
Another thing you’ll find from the Raspberry Pi is the idle screen. Idle is the IDE for Python, and it’s a really wonderful tool to use. So when you’re typing in code in Python, you can use the Python shell here and type in your Python code. You can also do File and New Window to create a new window with your Python shell.
So I hope that this has helped you. This button will help you to log out. And I hope that this helps you to introduce yourself to some of the things that you can do on Python—I’m sorry, on Raspberry Pi. So just look around and see what neat things that you can do on here and play with the terminal and idle screen. And good luck, and I hope you enjoy using the Raspberry Pi. Thank you.
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