Lesson-04 Using your Raspberry Pi 4B as a desktop
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the Raspberry Pi 4 Model-B board as a full desktop by interacting with the Raspberry Pi Operating System (Raspberry Pi OS) and some of its application software. In the previous tutorials, we introduced you to the Raspberry Pi series of boards and how to set up your Raspberry Pi 4.
Have a look at the Previous Tutorials here…
Lesson 01: Introduction to Raspberry Pi
Lesson 02: Setting up your Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Board.
Lesson 03: Using an Android Device to remotely control Raspberry Pi
In this tutorial, we’ll cover the following;
- Raspberry Pi Desktop Overview
- The file manager and file system
- Configuring your Raspberry Pi
- Using Terminal/Command Line
- Installing software and updating your Pi
- Connecting to the Internet and web browsing
- Programming
- Multimedia
Raspberry Pi Desktop Overview
Just like a Windows machine or Mac, if you’re a user of these two operating systems, then you will be familiar with the concept of a desktop as a folder within the file system that acts as a sort of background to everything you do on the computer.
Fig 1: Raspberry Menu
Upon clicking on the top-left raspberry pi icon, this will give you access to a start menu similar to that of Windows OS. It shows some of the applications and tools installed on the Raspberry Pi.
The file manager and file system
The Raspberry Pi file manager is just like the windows file explorer or the finder on a Mac. It allows you to copy and move files, as well as launch files (applications) that are executable. When it’s launched, it shows you the contents of your home directory and the root to your home directory will be /home/pi if you used “Pi” as your username upon logging in. Just like MacOS X, Raspberry Pi OS which is basically a distro of Linux uses slash (/) characters to separate the parts of a directory name and therefore (/) is called the root directory and /home/ is a directory that contains other directories, one for each user.
Fig 2: Raspberry File Manger & File System
The current directory is shown in the address bar at the top, and you can type directly into it to change the directory being viewed, or you can use the navigation bar at the side. The contents of the directory /home/pi include the desktop and various other directories such as documents, pictures, downloads, music, public, templates, bookshelf which contains a beginner’s guide to the Raspberry Pi, and other directories.
The filesystem of the Raspberry Pi OS pretty much follows the Linux standard of where files should go and only a few are specific to the Raspberry Pi. The /sys directory is where you can access all of the hardware on the Raspberry Pi.
Below are some of the important directories in the Raspberry Pi file system.
Directory | Description |
/bin | Programs and commands that all users can run |
/boot | All the files needed at boot time |
/dev | Special files that represent the devices on your system |
/etc | Configuration files |
/etc/init.d | Scripts to start up services |
/etc/x11 | X11 configuration files |
/home | User home directories |
/home/pi | Home directory for Pi user |
/lib | Kernel modules/drivers |
/media | Mount points for removable media |
/proc | Virtual directory with details about running processes and the OS |
/sbin | Programs for system maintenance |
/sys | A special directory on the Raspberry Pi that represents the hardware devices |
/tmp | Space for programs to create temporary files |
/usr | Programs and data usable by all users |
/usr/bin | Most of the programs in the operating system reside here |
/usr/games | This is usually empty by default. |
/usr/lib | Libraries to support common programs |
/usr/local | Software that may be specific to this machine goes here |
/usr/sbin | More system administration programs |
/usr/share | Supporting files that aren’t specific to any process or architecture |
/usr/src | Linux is open-source, here’s is the source |
/var | System logs and spool files |
/var/backups | Backup copies of all the most vital system files |
/var/cache | Programs such as apt-get cache their data here |
/var/log | All of the system logs and individual service logs |
/var/mail | All user email is stored here |
/var/spool | Data waiting to be processed (eg incoming email, print jobs, etc). |
Table 1: Important directories in the Raspberry Pi OS file system
Configuring your Raspberry Pi
Configuring your Raspberry Pi can be done during the installation of the Raspberry Pi OS as we saw in the previous tutorial and also after the installation of the Raspberry Pi OS. In case you want to configure your Pi OS a little more and make a few changes here and there, then you will need to use the Configuration tool which can be accessed under Menu – Preferences – Raspberry Pi Configuration as shown in the figure below;
Fig 3: Raspberry PI Configuration
The Raspberry PI Configuration tool allows you to change many of the important settings on your Raspberry Pi and below we’ll discuss which configuration options are essential and which you might want to come back to if you need them.
System → Change Password
If you’re on a network with others, it’s a good idea to change the default password from “raspberry” to something a little stronger.
System → Boot
This option lets you boot straight to the graphical desktop environment and is set this way by default. If you select CLI, you’ll get the command line when you boot up, and you’ll have to start the graphical interface manually with the command startx.
Display → Overscan
The Overscan option is set to enabled at first because some monitors may cut off the edges of the desktop. If you have a black border around your desktop, then you can disable overscan to get the desktop to fill your screen.
Interfaces → SSH
This option turns on the Secure Shell (SSH) server, which will allow you to login to the Raspberry Pi remotely over a network. This is really handy, so you should leave it on.
Performance → GPU Memory
This option allows you to change the allocation of RAM available to the graphics processing unit. The rest of the RAM is left for the CPU to use. It’s best to leave the default split for now. If you decide to experiment with 3D graphics or video decoding, you may want to adjust this value in the future.
Performance → Overclock
With this option, you can run the processor at speeds higher than the default operation. This option is not available for Raspberry Pi 3 or 4. For now, it’s best to leave this setting alone.
Localization → Set Keyboard
The default keyboard settings are for a generic keyboard in a UK-style layout. If you want the keys to do what they’re labeled to do, you’ll definitely want to select a keyboard type and map-ping that corresponds to your setup. Luckily, the keyboard list is very robust. Note that your locale settings can affect your key-board settings as well.
Localization → Set Locale
If you’re outside the UK, you should change your locale to reflect your language and character encoding preferences. The default setting is for UK English with a standard UTF-8 character encoding (en_GB.UTF-8). Select en_US.UTF-8 if you’re in the US.
Localization → SetTimezone
You’ll probably want to set this. When you’re done, select OK and you’ll be prompted to restart so that the settings can take effect.
In case you want to access these settings from the command line, then you can use this command “sudo raspi-config” just enter it in the Terminal and hit enter, and you’ll get a window as shown below;
Fig 4: Raspberry Command Line Configuration
This method is discussed in the previous tutorial. We used it to set a Headless connection to the Raspberry Pi.
Using Terminal/Command Line
If you’re a Linux user, you’ve certainly used the command line before, and although it’s possible to use a Linux system completely via the graphical user interface, in general, you will need to type commands into the command line using a Terminal. You do this to install new applications and to configure the Raspberry Pi as you so desire.
To open the Terminal window, click on the terminal icon at the top of the screen (the icon looks like a monitor with a blank screen).
Fig 5: Raspberry Pi Terminal
With the Raspberry Pi OS, you’re most certainly going to find yourself using the Terminal a lot to run commands in the command line that are discussed in Lesson-05. It should be noted that when entering a directory or filename, you don’t have to type all of it, just press the TAB button and it will automatically be auto-completed for you.
Installing software and updating your Pi
The Raspberry Pi OS provides a Recommended Software Utility that you can use to add/install the software packages that you may need. This utility has almost all packages you will ever need while working with the Raspberry Pi that is, more IDEs, programming languages, Libre Office, Node Red, Scratch, wallpapers and so much more.
Fig 6: Raspberry Pi Recommended Software
The recommended software utility can be accessed under Menu – Preferences – Recommended Software, and to add or install a software package, check the box and click on install as shown in the figure below;
Connecting to the Internet and web browsing
To connect the Pi to the internet, you can simply plug in an ethernet cable with internet into the ethernet port of the Pi or you can connect to the available wi-fi networks by clicking on the arrow icon at the right-end part of the desktop.
The default web browser on the Raspberry Pi is the Chromium web browser which has an interface much like the regular chrome web browser on your desktop computers. Chromium is an open-source web browser upon which chrome is based and it runs quite well on all models of the Pi.
Fig 7: Web browsing using Chromium on Raspberry Pi
To access the Chromium web browser, click on the Raspberry Pi Icon to drop down a menu and then click on the Internet category and finally select Chromium web browser upon which on launching it will load the raspberrypi.com website.
Programming
The default programming language that comes pre-installed on the Raspberry Pi OS is Python and the default Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) that come pre-installed with the Pi OS are Geany Editor with basic IDE features and Thonny IDE which are mainly meant for beginners.
Fig 8: Raspberry Pi Programming
To start programming with the Raspberry Pi, select Menu – Programming and then choose the IDE of your choice. Other IDEs such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code will appear under this menu after you’ve installed them.
Multimedia
The default video/audio player included in the Raspberry Pi OS is the VLC media player. VLC is a powerful, easy-to-use media player that can play pretty much any media file you throw at it. Other media players can be installed using the recommended software utility.
Fig 9: Raspberry Pi VLC Media Player
Conclusion
You’re now familiar with the desktop applications of the Raspberry Pi, you’ve learnt how to access and use the file manager and how the file system is made up, how to configure your pi, how to use the Terminal/Command Line, how to install software and update your Pi, how to connect your Pi to the Internet, how to start Programming on the Pi and many more features.
In the next tutorial, we are going to learn about the most common Linux commands we often use while working with the Raspberry Pi…