In this chapter, we covered a lot. You now should have an SD card prepared for the Banana Pi with your choice of operating system. You should also have a means of connecting to the Pi, either by SSH or with a display connected directly to it. You will also have a desktop environment you like that you will feel comfortable working in while working on projects. These are the basic skills you need to take your hardware from new to working. It doesn't take long but you now have a working credit-card-sized computer. Your Banana Pi likely looks like mine by now.

In the next chapter we are going to cover some more operating system-specific topics such as the filesystem on Linux, important commands that you will end up using frequently, how to install and find software you want to work with, interfacing with the GPIO pins from the command line, and interacting with hardware peripherals. By the end of the next chapter you will not only have a working computer, you will know how to use it effectively.