Savvy Sage - Raspberry Pi Quick Start Guide Videos (Savvy Sage Archives)
About This Title
(Originally released on February 18th, 2015 and March 1st, 2015)
These videos are also featured in another Savvy Sage retrospective.
Raspberry Pi Quick Start GuideLet's start with my very first YouTube video, where I teach people how to setup an original Raspberry Pi in about 8 minutes.
Before 2015, my first online videos were self-hosted through my website. However, as my videos increased in quality and I started editing them in HD, I ran into some storage problems. So, I ultimately joined YouTube on February 13th, 2015.
The first video I ever made for YouTube was on the Raspberry Pi single-board computer, originally developed by the UK non-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation.
The story behind how I got into Raspberry Pi began at the beginning of 2015—I first heard about it through a wood-carved car racing event at a local church, and they used a Pi to calculate the time and speed.
I got pretty curious about this system and wanted to get one for myself. However, there was a problem: It wasn't sold at large retail chains like Best Buy, but rather at a much smaller retail chain called Micro Center.
Once I heard about this Raspberry Pi being sold (at least physically) through Micro Center, I went over to the nearest one, and I bought my first unit: the original.
So with something like this, what do you do with it? You make a video on it, of course!
Shortly after I created my first YouTube channel, I started filming my first YouTube video, where I showed people how to get started with the Raspberry Pi, in a video simply titled "Raspberry Pi Quick Start Guide". Within a few days, it was finished and uploaded to YouTube, 5 days after I created my channel.
Much like my earlier work, the video was filmed with one of my first cameras I ever owned, the Canon Powershot ELPH 110 HS, and the video quality was, in hindsight...not very good.
There was a reason for that however, as I recorded the raw footage in 480p (or VGA quality)—while the camera does support HD video (up to 1080p), there is a recording time limit per clip. In the case of my Canon camera, you could only record up to 10 minutes of HD video per clip—there is no time limit per clip however if you record in standard definition.
The entire video and voiceovers were recorded without a script—aside from a couple of notes here and there, a lot of it was impromptu.
And like many of my videos back then, they were all edited with iMovie, which was fitting for something basic like this.
However, those flaws are nowhere near as notable as when I referred to the touchscreen display connector as a connector for the camera module—when I first did this video, I assumed that because both of these connectors looked identical, they would work with the camera module...not knowing that they're not the same internally. (This is why it's extremely important to research before you start filming.)
Finally, there's NOOBS—first introduced in 2013, NOOBS (or New Out Of Box Software) was meant to make it easy to install Linux on your Raspberry Pi without having to use disk imaging tools, and it also acted as a boot loader, so you could load more than one operating system on it, should you choose to. As of 2022, NOOBS is no longer in active development, and it has since been replaced by the Raspberry Pi Imager program.
The version of NOOBS showcased in the video was the one that was compatible with the then-newly released Raspberry Pi 2, and many of the distros featured have since seen plenty of changes...
Raspbian (a portmanteau of Raspberry Pi and Debian) is now called Raspberry Pi OS, and continues to be available for download on the official Raspberry Pi website. Initially, Raspbian started up with a text-only setup configuration, however with the current versions, it has switched to a graphical setup assistant, thus making it far more user-friendly.
OpenELEC (Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center), a Linux distro based on Kodi (formerly XBMC, aka Xbox Media Center) was forked in March 2016 due to "creative differences", with its final update released in 2017. Most of its developers moved on to the LibreELEC project, which is still going to this day—as of 2020 however, it no longer supports the first generation Raspberry Pi hardware.
Arch Linux ARM is still around today—as of 2022 however, it no longer supports the first generation Raspberry Pi hardware.
RaspBMC, another Linux distro based on XBMC, was later superseded by OSMC (Open Source Media Center) just a few months after I released my first YouTube video. It has since been ported to other platforms outside of the Raspberry Pi, such as the 1st generation Apple TV, and OSMC's own Vero hardware. As of 2020, it no longer supports the first generation Raspberry Pi hardware.
Pidora, originally built as a port of Fedora Remix for the Raspberry Pi, hasn't been in active development since 2014, as Fedora now officially supports the Raspberry Pi, beginning with the second generation hardware.
RISC OS is still around to this day—largely unchanged—and is very much in active development.
Installing Linux Without NOOBSAbout a week after I finished my first YouTube video, I decided to start work on a follow-up, where I showed viewers how to install a Linux distribution outside of NOOBS, using some third-party software.
The video, titled "Installing Linux Without NOOBS", was finished and uploaded on March 1st, 2015. This was my second video I ever made for YouTube, and it's much shorter compared to the first, at around 6 minutes.
There are a couple things to keep in mind here:
The website featured in the video (downloads.raspberrypi.org) is still active as of 2026. You can still download the latest and legacy versions of Raspberry Pi OS and NOOBS from there, or you can download the legacy versions of OpenELEC, RaspBMC, Arch Linux, and even Pidora.
The traditional method of using third-party tools, such as Apple-PiBaker and Win32DiskImager, have largely been replaced with the aforementioned Imager software that the Raspberry Pi organization now recommends. (You can still use both tools if you'd like, which are still available for download...or you can use other alternatives like Rufus.)
ConclusionSo, there you have it—my first two YouTube videos! These were made at a time when I just created them as a hobby—I never would've thought that they would take me to where I am today. I've certainly come a long way, and have gotten better since then.
(Originally released on February 18th, 2015 and March 1st, 2015)
These videos are also featured in another Savvy Sage retrospective.
Raspberry Pi Quick Start GuideLet's start with my very first YouTube video, where I teach people how to setup an original Raspberry Pi in about 8 minutes.
Before 2015, my first online videos were self-hosted through my website. However, as my videos increased in quality and I started editing them in HD, I ran into some storage problems. So, I ultimately joined YouTube on February 13th, 2015.
The first video I ever made for YouTube was on the Raspberry Pi single-board computer, originally developed by the UK non-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation.
The story behind how I got into Raspberry Pi began at the beginning of 2015—I first heard about it through a wood-carved car racing event at a local church, and they used a Pi to calculate the time and speed.
I got pretty curious about this system and wanted to get one for myself. However, there was a problem: It wasn't sold at large retail chains like Best Buy, but rather at a much smaller retail chain called Micro Center.
Once I heard about this Raspberry Pi being sold (at least physically) through Micro Center, I went over to the nearest one, and I bought my first unit: the original.
So with something like this, what do you do with it? You make a video on it, of course!
Shortly after I created my first YouTube channel, I started filming my first YouTube video, where I showed people how to get started with the Raspberry Pi, in a video simply titled "Raspberry Pi Quick Start Guide". Within a few days, it was finished and uploaded to YouTube, 5 days after I created my channel.
Much like my earlier work, the video was filmed with one of my first cameras I ever owned, the Canon Powershot ELPH 110 HS, and the video quality was, in hindsight...not very good.
There was a reason for that however, as I recorded the raw footage in 480p (or VGA quality)—while the camera does support HD video (up to 1080p), there is a recording time limit per clip. In the case of my Canon camera, you could only record up to 10 minutes of HD video per clip—there is no time limit per clip however if you record in standard definition.
The entire video and voiceovers were recorded without a script—aside from a couple of notes here and there, a lot of it was impromptu.
And like many of my videos back then, they were all edited with iMovie, which was fitting for something basic like this.
However, those flaws are nowhere near as notable as when I referred to the touchscreen display connector as a connector for the camera module—when I first did this video, I assumed that because both of these connectors looked identical, they would work with the camera module...not knowing that they're not the same internally. (This is why it's extremely important to research before you start filming.)
Finally, there's NOOBS—first introduced in 2013, NOOBS (or New Out Of Box Software) was meant to make it easy to install Linux on your Raspberry Pi without having to use disk imaging tools, and it also acted as a boot loader, so you could load more than one operating system on it, should you choose to. As of 2022, NOOBS is no longer in active development, and it has since been replaced by the Raspberry Pi Imager program.
The version of NOOBS showcased in the video was the one that was compatible with the then-newly released Raspberry Pi 2, and many of the distros featured have since seen plenty of changes...
Raspbian (a portmanteau of Raspberry Pi and Debian) is now called Raspberry Pi OS, and continues to be available for download on the official Raspberry Pi website. Initially, Raspbian started up with a text-only setup configuration, however with the current versions, it has switched to a graphical setup assistant, thus making it far more user-friendly.
OpenELEC (Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center), a Linux distro based on Kodi (formerly XBMC, aka Xbox Media Center) was forked in March 2016 due to "creative differences", with its final update released in 2017. Most of its developers moved on to the LibreELEC project, which is still going to this day—as of 2020 however, it no longer supports the first generation Raspberry Pi hardware.
Arch Linux ARM is still around today—as of 2022 however, it no longer supports the first generation Raspberry Pi hardware.
RaspBMC, another Linux distro based on XBMC, was later superseded by OSMC (Open Source Media Center) just a few months after I released my first YouTube video. It has since been ported to other platforms outside of the Raspberry Pi, such as the 1st generation Apple TV, and OSMC's own Vero hardware. As of 2020, it no longer supports the first generation Raspberry Pi hardware.
Pidora, originally built as a port of Fedora Remix for the Raspberry Pi, hasn't been in active development since 2014, as Fedora now officially supports the Raspberry Pi, beginning with the second generation hardware.
RISC OS is still around to this day—largely unchanged—and is very much in active development.
Installing Linux Without NOOBSAbout a week after I finished my first YouTube video, I decided to start work on a follow-up, where I showed viewers how to install a Linux distribution outside of NOOBS, using some third-party software.
The video, titled "Installing Linux Without NOOBS", was finished and uploaded on March 1st, 2015. This was my second video I ever made for YouTube, and it's much shorter compared to the first, at around 6 minutes.
There are a couple things to keep in mind here:
The website featured in the video (downloads.raspberrypi.org) is still active as of 2026. You can still download the latest and legacy versions of Raspberry Pi OS and NOOBS from there, or you can download the legacy versions of OpenELEC, RaspBMC, Arch Linux, and even Pidora.
The traditional method of using third-party tools, such as Apple-PiBaker and Win32DiskImager, have largely been replaced with the aforementioned Imager software that the Raspberry Pi organization now recommends. (You can still use both tools if you'd like, which are still available for download...or you can use other alternatives like Rufus.)
ConclusionSo, there you have it—my first two YouTube videos! These were made at a time when I just created them as a hobby—I never would've thought that they would take me to where I am today. I've certainly come a long way, and have gotten better since then.
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