Skip to Content
Raspberry Pi User Guide, 3rd Edition
book

Raspberry Pi User Guide, 3rd Edition

by Eben Upton, Gareth Halfacree
September 2014
Beginner
312 pages
7h 6m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Raspberry Pi User Guide, 3rd Edition

Chapter 9

The Pi as a Productivity Machine

THE FLEXIBILITY OF the Raspberry Pi makes it a good choice as a low-power, general-purpose desktop computer. Although it will never reach the same level of performance as a standard desktop or laptop, its low cost and environmentally friendly power consumption help to make up for any problems with occasionally sluggish performance.

Although the Raspberry Pi-specific Raspbian distribution provided on the official website doesn’t include any of the usual productivity software you might expect of a general-purpose PC—such as a word processor, spreadsheet or image editing—you can install such software via the apt-get command. You can also skip the local installation and use cloud-based software through the web browser, which can offer improved performance over locally installed packages at the cost of flexibility and advanced functionality.

Using either of the methods described in this chapter—locally installed applications or cloud-based services—the Pi can be used as a day-to-day machine for office and school work, while not harming its usability as a platform for programming and experimentation.

Using Cloud-Based Apps

If you use your Pi connected to the ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Raspberry Pi User Guide, 4th Edition

Raspberry Pi User Guide, 4th Edition

Eben Upton, Gareth Halfacree
Getting Started With Raspberry Pi, 4th Edition

Getting Started With Raspberry Pi, 4th Edition

Shawn Wallace, Matt Richardson, Wolfram Donat

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781118921678Purchase book