This page is for people with little or no Pi experience. The Allsky documentation assumes you have basic Pi knowledge. For example, you know how to turn a Pi on and off and how to connect a camera to it. If not, read this page.

## Operating Systems

The Linux operating system controls the Pi's hardware and lets you run software such as Allsky. Just like Windows and MacOS, there are multiple versions of the Pi's operating system (called "Pi OS"), and support for old versions is eventually dropped.

Bookworm is the current Pi OS and is what you should run (use the 64-bit version if you can). Allsky runs on the older Bullseye and Buster operating systems but this is the last version of Allsky that will run on Buster.

There are different distributions of Linux (called "distros") from various companies. While they are basically the same Linux, there can be subtle differences and the administrative commands can vary.

> Allsky only supports the Debian distro.

## Raspberry Pi Models

There are several models of the Pi including Zero, Zero 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and others. These models have different processing power; the Pi 5 is the most powerful, followed by the 4, then 3, then 2, then 1. The Zero 2 is near the Pi 3 in terms of processing power but has less memory. The Pi 4 and 5 are available with up to 8 GB memory whereas the Pi Zero and Zero 2 are limited to 0.5 GB memory.

This page will help you pick a Pi that runs well with Allsky.