Installing Raspberry Pi Operating System Without a Display

The Raspberry Pi is a small computer the size of a credit card that you can connect to a TV, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and other devices.

Currently, the Raspberry Pi can replace a desktop computer for various uses, including word processing, spreadsheets, media center, gaming, etc., or it can be used to build an ultra-low-power small server for 24/7 service, or to create a smart home system with smart devices.

Before learning about Raspberry Pi, you need to have a basic understanding of Linux. If you plan to develop with the Raspberry Pi, C language or Python is a good choice.

The Raspberry Pi is a microcomputer suitable for programming education, and since it is a computer, it definitely needs an operating system. Now, let me teach you how to install the operating system!

(The Raspberry Pi 4B 8G has been released as of July 2020)

Raspberry Pi 3B, 3B+, 4B. Currently, I only have the 3B, so I will use the 3B to install the operating system; the installation method is basically the same for the others. The Raspberry Pi 3B is built on the Broadcom 2837 ARMv8 64-bit processor, which is faster and more powerful compared to its predecessors. With its built-in wireless and Bluetooth connectivity, it is also an ideal IoT solution.

The Raspberry Pi development board does not have onboard Flash, so the Raspberry Pi’s operating system needs to be installed on a TF card.

This way, by using removable TF cards, we can switch between multiple operating systems quickly and conveniently without having to re-flash the system each time.

Many Linux distributions support the Raspberry Pi, including the officially recommended Raspbian system, which is based on Debian, as well as Ubuntu, CentOS, Kali, Lakka, OSMC, and others.

Additionally, Google has released Android Things, and Microsoft has launched Windows 10 IoT, both of which also support the Raspberry Pi development board, making the Raspberry Pi ecosystem exciting.

The vast majority of Linux systems supporting Raspberry Pi, as well as Android Things, can be flashed using Win32 Disk Imager software or the official Raspberry Pi installation tool NOOBS.

The Windows 10 IoT Core system can be flashed using Noobs or Microsoft’s IoT Dashboard tool.

When installing the operating system, we need a TF card, a card reader, and a computer running Windows. We will use two methods to install the system: installing on the Windows platform and using the NOOBS tool.

3.1 Prepare a micro SD card

If you have carefully observed the appearance of the Raspberry Pi, you will find that it does not have a hard disk structure, and there is only a micro SD card slot on the back of the motherboard. Yes, this is the storage for the Raspberry Pi, so you need to install the operating system on a micro SD card.

Before installing the operating system, you need to prepare a micro SD card of at least 8G, but it doesn’t need to be too large; if it exceeds 64G, you may encounter some strange issues (4B can use 128G).

The Raspberry Pi official recommends that the SD card’s write speed be class 4, and it’s not necessarily better if the write speed is faster. Using a class 10 card does not mean that the Raspberry Pi will run faster, as increasing the write speed often sacrifices read speed and increases addressing time.

However, it seems that it is not easy to buy a class 4 card nowadays; almost all cards on the market are class 10, which can also be used perfectly.

It is recommended to purchase SD cards from reputable brands, as some cards may not be of good quality and can lead to installation failures or inexplicable runtime errors.

I bought a 16G class 10 micro SD card for less than 30 yuan on a certain platform, and it works great.

Of course, to read and write this micro SD card, you also need to buy a card reader, which is not needed for the Raspberry Pi but will be used in the following steps to write the operating system to the SD card.

Format the mini SD card to FAT format

Some newly bought mini SD cards are already formatted and can be skipped to the next step, such as the SanDisk 32GB card I bought on a certain platform.

If it is an already used or occupied memory card, it needs to be formatted. You can format it normally through a computer; if you have installed a system, you need to use software to format the memory card;

Download here:

https://www.fixdown.com/ushendu.htm

Then install the software:

Check if it is the drive where the memory card is located, then click: