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Installation and first experience {#chapter-04}

Once you have prepared your microSD card then insert it in your Raspberry Pi. Note that the card pushes in easily. It will only go in one way. On a Pi 400 you can eject it by gently pushing on it once and it will pop out enough to grab it. There is no need to pull on it to remove it because it essentially pops out. With a Pi 4b you will need to pull it out.

Turn the power on with the Pi connected to a monitor, USB keyboard and mouse. You will shortly see the firmware rainbow splash screen. Shortly after that there are a series of screens allowing you to customize the installation:

  • pick your language
  • pick the keyboard layout language
  • enable the Wi-Fi network access if you want to have concurrent updates
  • select your timezone by clicking on your timezone region
  • enter your preferred name and your login name with a password -- this is your login account. Document this if you are poor at remembering login and password details.

As the installation starts it will show some informational screens to entertain you while it installs. Eventually it will reboot and present you with the login screen. Once you login you will see the default MATE desktop configuration.

Before going further immediately update the software on the system. The MATE installation image is not released often, so it can be a bit behind the package update curve. As well, any final configuration issues will be updated.

Open a terminal window by selecting:
Application -> System Tools -> MATE Terminal
and enter the following commands:

// This will update the system's knowledge about what should be updated;
// in other works, the cache of software package names pending for update:
$ sudo apt update

// then update the software; the command is actually 'upgrade', which is odd,
// at least to me.. I like 'yum check-update' and 'yum update' much better...
$ sudo apt upgrade

It will take a while. Once finished there is one more update to do before you reboot the system -- the Raspberry Pi bootloader EEPROM update, in case there are pending updates to apply:

// You can check the current state of firmware updates without being root.
// Here we see that the firmware is up-to-date, but the default bootloader
// could be set to use the latest firmware:
$ rpi-eeprom-update
*** UPDATE AVAILABLE ***
BOOTLOADER: update available
   CURRENT: Thu 29 Apr 16:11:25 UTC 2021 (1619712685)
    LATEST: Tue 25 Jan 14:30:41 UTC 2022 (1643121041)
   RELEASE: default (/lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/default)
            Use raspi-config to change the release.

  VL805_FW: Using bootloader EEPROM
     VL805: up to date
   CURRENT: 000138a1
    LATEST: 000138a1

// now we need to be root since we want to apply the update:
$ sudo rpi-eeprom-update -a
*** INSTALLING EEPROM UPDATES ***
...
EEPROM updates pending. Please reboot to apply the update.
To cancel a pending update run "sudo rpi-eeprom-update -r".

Now reboot the server to get the newer kernel, and to complete the firmware update. On the far upper right taskbar, select the power button icon, and then select Switch Off -> Restart.

Getting Going with the Command-Line

For people without much command-line experience it is important to get going at the command-line. When logged into the MATE desktop open a terminal window by selecting Application -> System Tools -> MATE Terminal.

Try some command-line examples in the appendix. Note that the up/down arrow keys can be used to recall your previous commands. You can edit and reuse an entry in your previous commands using the left/right arrow keys.

You will find that the 'TAB' key (shown below as <TAB>) is very useful for command-line completion.

Suppose you are going to use the command 'timedatectl'. You start by typing the word 'time' and then hit the TAB key once, then again when you do not get a response. You will see 4 possible commands as shown below. Then to complete the command simply type d followed by another TAB and the full command will complete:

$ time<TAB><TAB>
time         timedatectl  timeout      times
$ timed<TAB>
$ timedatectl

Look online for some tutorials; there are millions of results on Google if you search for:

    Linux "command line" tutorial for beginners

See also the list of all commands used in this guide.

There are many Ubuntu-specific tutorials. You might want to check out these two: