Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Windows versus Linux
Another important difference between the Raspberry Pi and your desktop or laptop, other
than the size and price, is the operating system—the software that allows you to control the
computer.
The majority of desktop and laptop computers available today run one of two operating systems:
Microsoft Windows or Apple OS X. Both platforms are
closed source
, created in a secretive
environment using proprietary techniques.
These operating systems are known as closed source because of the nature of their
source code
,
the computer-language recipe that tells the system what to do. In closed-source software, this
recipe is kept a closely guarded secret. Users are able to obtain the finished software, but never
to see how it's made.
The Raspberry Pi, by contrast, is designed to run an operating system called
GNU/Linux
—
hereafter referred to simply as Linux. Unlike Windows or OS X, Linux is
open source
: it's pos-
sible to download the source code for the entire operating system and make whatever
changes you desire. Nothing is hidden, and all changes are made in full view of the public.
This open source development ethos has allowed Linux to be altered quickly to run on the
Raspberry Pi
.
At the time of this writing, several versions of Linux—known as
distributions
—
have been ported to the Raspberry Pi's BCM2835 chip, including Raspbian, Pidora and Arch
Linux.
The different distributions cater to different needs, but they all have something in common:
they're all open source. They're also all, by and large, compatible with each other: software
written on a Debian system will usually operate perfectly well on Arch Linux, and vice versa.
Linux isn't exclusive to the Raspberry Pi. Hundreds of different distributions are available for
desktops, laptops and even mobile devices; even Google's popular Android platform is devel-
oped on top of a Linux core. If you find that you enjoy the experience of using Linux on the
Raspberry Pi, you could consider adding it to other computing devices you use as well. It will
happily coexist with your current operating system, allowing you to enjoy the benefits of
both while giving you a familiar environment when your Pi is unavailable.
As with the difference between ARM and x86, there's a key point to make about the practical
difference between Windows and OS X and Linux: software written specifically for Windows
or OS X won't run on Linux. Thankfully, there are plenty of compatible alternatives for the
overwhelming majority of common software products—better still, the majority are free to
use and as open source as the operating system itself, and can even be installed on both
Windows and OS X to provide a familiar experience across all three platforms.
