Raspbian’s Add/Remove Sof t ware tool is
useful—though also spectacularly ugly.though the ARMv8 processor can’t
handle it. You lose access to some
of your RAM if you’ve gone for the
4GB version, and many distros
lack support for some of the Pi 4’s
functionality, but this is a platform
based on experimentation.INSTALLING AND RUNNING
Presuming you’ve chosen Raspbian,
let’s get you up and running with a
system that boots from microSD and
immediately jumps to an external
SSD for storing and running the
main bulk of the operating system.
Start as you usually would, by
downloading the latest fully loaded
version of Raspbian Buster from
http://raspberrypi.org/downloads/
raspbian. Unzip, then head to http://
balena.io/etcher to get the latest
version of balenaEtcher, a super-
simple disk imager. Write the
Raspbian image not to your microSD
card but to that USB drive—you
will, it goes without saying, lose
everything that’s on there, so don’t
wipe a drive full of beloved content.
Do the same thing again, but write
the image to your SD card this time.
Insert the microSD card into your
Pi and plug your drive into one of
its USB 3.0 ports, wire everything
else up, plug in your peripherals,
and power on via the mains adapter.
Once you’ve waded through the
initial options, open a command line
with the icon at the top of the screen,
and run sudo fdisk -l to see a list
of your attached drives. The Pi’s
default password is “raspberry” incase you need it. One drive, your SD
card, will have a name beginning
“mmc,” while your USB drive (which
is what we’re looking for) will likely
begin “sda.” If it says “sdb,” switch
that out as follows.
Run sudo nano /boot/cmdline.
txt to edit the options that are
passed to the Pi when booting from
that SD card and, at the end of the
line, add root=/dev/sda2 rootwait
to tell Raspbian that your main
filesystem is on the USB drive. Exit
n a n o (C t r l-X , Y, t h e n R e t u r n ) , a n d r u n
sudo reboot to start your Pi again,
this time (all being well), running
from the USB drive. The main tell
is that you need to set everything up
again—if you previously connected
your Wi-Fi, or run through the
initial setup procedure, all of that
is returned back to the defaults
written to your USB drive.
There’s a problem, though: You
basically have no space on that drive,
because the partition is written to be
only as large as it absolutely needs
to be. Run df -h in the command
line and you’ll see—the /dev/root/
partition just ain’t big enough.
The raspi-config tool that would
normally do this only wants to work
with SD cards, so let’s modif y it: Run
sudo cp /usr/bin/raspi-config ~ to
copy it to your home directory, then
run sudo sed -i ‘s/mmcblk0p/sda/’
~/raspi-config and sudo sed -i ‘s/
mmcblk0/sda/’ ~/raspi-config to
switch it to accessing the device at
“sda,” then run the version in your
home directory with sudo ~/raspi-©^DEBIAN^
PROJECT,^ SAMSUNGCome, fill your tiny $35-$55 desktop PC
with the kind of apps a PC of that value
could never have dreamed of in days gone
by. Show it who’s boss. You’re boss, in case you
hadn’t realized. In Raspbian, you’ll want to click
the raspberry icon, then head to “Preferences >
Add/Remove Software” to find the packages.›› OFFICE: LIBREOFFICE
No sense in deviating from the open-source
standard here, because the LibreOffice suite runs
remarkably well on the Pi 4, particularly once
you’ve made the transition to booting from an
SSD. You’ll find it preinstalled with most distros,
including Raspbian.›› IMAGE EDITING: GIMP
Another staple: The GNU Image Manipulation
Program is a fantastic and extremely capable
Photoshop-esque photo editor and graphics
mangler that runs perfectly adequately on high-
RAM editions of the Raspberry Pi 4.›› INTERNET: CHROMIUM
We’ll stick with Raspbian’s default browser again,
because it’s pretty damn snappy, but bear in mind
that Chromium’s favorite thing in the world is your
RAM, and each of its tabs are going to eat as much
of it as possible.›› PRINTING: CUPS
Whether you’ve got the correct drivers for the
most common printer in the world or you’re
working with Linux on some obscure sub-model
of a lesser-known laser, it’s all a bit of a gamble.
CUPS (the Common UNIX Printing System) is your
best bet for getting those documents on paper.›› VIDEO: VLC
OK, we’re recommending VLC, because it works
adequately well, but the Pi’s speciality is not in
decoding video, especially that which isn’t H.264/
H.265 encoded. There are ways, such as using
Plex or Kodi, but sticking to online streaming (and,
even then, to 720p) may be your best option.One of the Pi’s biggest stumbling
blocks is gone: The USB and Ethernet
ports no longer share the same bus,
restricting the speed of both.
A fast ex ternal SSD really dial s up the snappiness of Raspbian on the Pi 4.Raspberry Pi 4
38 MAXIMUMPC JAN 2020 maximumpc.com