NOOBS

NOOBS (New Out Of the Box Software) is an open source and freely distributed software project that has been created from the ground up to provide users with all-in-one offline and online installers which will help you install various GNU/Linux operating systems on the Raspberry Pi computer boards.

Installs Raspbian, Arch Linux, Pidora, OpenELEC, RaspBMC and RISC OS

The NOOBS installer will help you to install several Linux kernel-based operating systems that have been specifically engineered for ARM devices, such as Raspberry Pi. Users will be able to choose between Raspbian (Debian-based), Arch Linux, Pidora (Fedora-based), OpenELEC (Debian with Kodi), RaspBMC (Debian with XBMC), as well as RISC OS.

Distributed as an offline installer and network installer

The NOOBS software is distributed in two distinct editions, NOOBS and NOOBS Lite. While the former is available for download as a 700+ MB package which includes offline installers (a network connection is not required) for some of the aforementioned distributions, the latter is a much smaller package that only includes network installers for all the above GNU/Linux OSes.

Getting started with NOOBS

To use the NOOBS package for installing Arch Linux, Pidora, OpenELEC, Raspbian, RaspBMC or RISC OS operating systems on your Raspberry Pi device, download the latest release from Softoware or its website, save the package on a location of your choice, and extract the files contained in ZIP archive.

Insert an empty and FAT formatted SD card of 2GB or higher capacity on your computer and copy the extracted files (only the files, not the entire extracted directory) onto the root directory of the SD card. Then, eject the SD card and insert it into your Raspberry Pi device. Connect the power supply and boot the device into the NOOBS installer, from where you can choose an operating system to install.