Operation Manual

Chapter 8: 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 levels 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 Debian 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—this
software can be installed 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.
If you’re planning to use the Pi as a pure productivity machine, it’s a good idea to reserve more of the 256 MB of memory for general-purpose use
and less for the graphics processor. To learn how to change this split, see the section on “Memory Partitioning—start.elf” in Chapter 6,
“Configuring the Raspberry Pi”.
Using Cloud-Based Apps
If you use your Pi connected to the Internet the majority of the time, either through the Model B’s integrated Ethernet port or a
USB wired or wireless adapter on the Model A, cloud-based software offers a powerful yet lightweight means of using office-
centric software on the Pi.
Cloud-based software is so called because it doesn’t live locally on your computer like a regular piece of software. Instead, it’s
stored on powerful servers located in data centres throughout the world and accessed over the Internet using a web browser. By
tapping in to the processing and storage capabilities of a far more powerful remote server, it’s possible for the Pi to work on
more complicated documents and tasks without slowing down.
Cloud-based software has other advantages over locally-installed applications, too. Any given cloud-based application will look
the same on any given device, and many of these applications include mobile-oriented versions designed for access from
smartphones and tablets. Files are also stored on the remote servers, making them accessible from any device without taking up
any room on the Pi’s SD card.
Cloud-based applications aren’t perfect, however. They typically lag behind their locally-installed counterparts in functionality,
and often lack advanced features or support fewer file formats. They are also inaccessible when no Internet connection is
available, making them a poor choice for users with unreliable connections.
If you think that the improved performance and saved space on your Pi’s SD card is worth the trade-off, continue reading. If
not, skip to the next section of this chapter to learn how to install OpenOffice.org, an open-source office suite equivalent to
Microsoft Office.
The most popular cloud-based office suites are the following:
• Google Drive—Run by the search and advertising giant Google, Google Drive (formerly known as Google Docs) includes a
word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation tool (see Figure 8-1). Corporate users can also sign up for a Google Apps
account, which provides improved functionality. If you have a Gmail web-based email account, it will automatically work for
Google Drive. You can access the service at http://docs.google.com.
Figure 8-1: Google Drive running in Chromium on the Raspberry Pi