Hi peeps,

I'm looking into the world of Linux. I have had some experience with Ubuntu but not a great deal. I'm planning on building a car PC using the new Raspberry Pi board which is due out at the end of the month. It is essentially an ARM processor and a board, with HDMI and RCA outputs. Pretty neat and very cheap. It will have a SD slot for storage plus USB so I could connect up a small HDD..but I plan to store everything on a bigish SD card.

The RasPi does not have a OS as standard although it will come available with a selection it seems. Apparently Ubuntu will not be supported due to the ARM processor, so where do I go from here? Esentially I want to be able to connect to the net with a USB dongle, WiFi (Dongle) music (I have everything in iTunes on Windows at the moment so ideally something that can read the itunes format as I don't fancy converting my whole library!!)

Any suggestions?

What Linux distros will be supported at launch?

Debian, Fedora and ArchLinux will be supported from the start. We hope to see support from other distros later. We will be selling SD cards with the distros preloaded. (Sept 4 2011 – originally, this FAQ suggested that Ubuntu would be supported. Because of issues with newer releases of Ubuntu and the ARM processor we are using, Ubuntu can’t commit to support Raspberry Pi at the moment.)

Thanks for that, I did see that but I have no idea about any of them...

Debian and Fedora (Red Hat) are two of the big players in the Linux world.

There will be differences in the some tasks are achieved, but basically all the same OS

Better/wider hardware support than many other distro's

Good luck with getting a PI board.

Also, I'd go with debian, as you can get used to that on a PC and they've supported non x86 architectures for donkeys years.

+1 for Debian.

Just started using this for my Final Year Project at University - Impressive and pretty easy so far. Touch wood.

I was going to see if I could get RISC OS up and running on it.

it does look at a brilliant bit of kit. Apparently they have 10k in manufacture..I'd like to think I can get ine of those...if not I'll just have to wait

I was going to see if I could get RISC OS up and running on it.

An A3000 in a matchbox, nice

I've been using Linux distros for more than 10 years and you can't go wrong with most of them. The best way is to burn an ISO from the Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE etc web site. Linux Mint is my current favourite and is based on Debian. It supports 99% video/audio/web content from first install. Best to burn it onto DVD then boot it as a Live DVD to make sure all your hardware gets recognised ok. If you like it, you can install it permanently. The current edition of Linux Format magazine in W H Smiths has it on its accompanying DVD.

I built a tiny PC to feed through the TV using an old thin client box onto which I put Slitaz, which is a Linux distro that weighs in at only 30 MB. The OS was installed using an external CD drive onto a CF card and runs happily in 256 MB RAM, but you could also use an SD card. It boots from cold to the web in 12 seconds! I use a Keysonic wireless keyboard/trackpad from up to 10 metres away. The install sized the screen resolution to perfectly match the TV, giving me i-player, YouTube and a browser through the TV. Other tiny distros are Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux, Tiny Core Linux

I also did the same trick with an EeePC 700, which is pretty small, but has a noisy fan. The thin client is silent.

I'm pretty sure the same principle would work in a car and Rasberry Pi looks really interesting! The issue will be getting the video out into the head unit, assuming that's your intention. Otherwise, you'll need a compatible screen. A touch type would negate the need for a separate keyboard, but may be hard to use. Good luck!

Thanks for your input. I'm running Ubuntu on my pc at the mo and once the pi is available I'll play about and see what works and what doesnt.

The pi has a RCA output by the looks of things and my headunit also has RCA do in theory I can run a lead direct