Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Lighter Applications and Tools
Without major modification to the Fedora install you've seen about all you can do to optimize it. With that in mind
you should be looking at using lightweight applications and daemons where possible. I tend to use the network
scripts to configure my networks as it is less overhead. If you do need a GUI to configure your wired or WiFi networks
I suggest you take a look at the Wireless Interface Connection Daemon (WICD). WICD is a lightweight network
configuration tool that achieves a similar outcome as a network manager.
You should also try using a lightweight editor. I personally like vi or Vim. Their features are rich and very easy to
use, no matter the connection source. There isn't space in this topic to cover vi or Vim, so refer to
Learn Raspberry Pi
with Linux
from Apress, which contains a chapter on the subject, or visit the Vim web site at
vim.org
.
Whichever resource you use, try it out; give it a go for a few days or weeks. It will grow on you.
Summary
In this chapter I talked you through the two ways to install the Fedora Raspberry Pi remix distribution. I guided you
though the first boot issue you had on the Raspberry Pi and helped you though firmware updates and where to get
the firmware. After all, did you really expect your Fedora remix for Raspberry Pi to “just work”? I sure did not. If you
are after an easy-to-install, no-hassle distribution I would suggest you take a look at Raspbian. After you finally got
a working install I went through the steps to update the kernel and firmware from the foundation's GitHub site.
After that we took a walk through the hardware and looked at the buses and tools needed to examine them. Next up,
I worked on tweaking the installation for better performance, by removing heavy applications and configuring the
system by hand. Not so hard, was it?
I then went on to talk about I/O schedulers and why they are important for the Raspberry Pi. You now know how
to change the scheduler on the fly and set it permanently to your desired scheduler. Lastly, I talked quickly about the
benefits of using applications that are light on system resources.
In the next chapter you will finally get to make use of the Raspberry Pi as a hardware project. I will guide you
through setting up a simple temperature sensor via the GPIO, and I will also help you to access the temperature
sensor from the Linux operating system.
