What this book covers

Chapter 1, Installation and Setup, introduces the Banana Pi device. It also explains which distributions are available and how to download and install a Linux distribution. Moreover, we present Android as a contrast to our upcoming Linux adventure.

Chapter 2, Administration, introduces the reader to the most common tools to administrate their fresh Linux installation. We will connect remotely using SSH from Windows (using PuTTY) and Linux (using the command-line SSH application). Besides user modification (adding a new user, changing passwords, and so on), we will also cover basic maintenance tasks, such as searching and installing a new software, updating the system using the distributions package manager, and so on.

Chapter 3, External Disks, covers all about external disk drives. We will connect and mount USB drives and HDD drives using the SATA interface and explore the possibility of switching the root filesystem to and boot from an external drive.

Chapter 4, Networking, presents recipes for common networking tasks using the Banana Pi. One of the key strengths of the device is the fast Ethernet and wireless (Banana Pro) adapters it provides—especially combined with the fast SATA interface—which is the base of powerful network applications.

Chapter 5, Using the GPIO Pins, introduces the GPIO pins. We will light up an LED using the shell. Furthermore, we will build a simple circuit, including a pull-up resistor and control an LED with a button. To achieve this, we will introduce the C programming language with the WiringPi library and the Python scripting language with the RPi.GPIO library.

Chapter 6, Multimedia, covers configuring the two audio outputs (line out and HDMI). We will discuss and solve the hardware acceleration problem by compiling important components and using these mentioned components to build video players and Kodi. The configuration of a remote control using LIRC is also covered.