The next step is writing this file to the micro SD-card for your Raspberry PI 4. If the unzip utility is not yet installed on your PC, you can install it with sudo apt install unzip.Īfter extracting the ZIP-archive, the file with the *.img extension shows up in the same directory. Run this command to extract the ZIP-file:

On my PC the ZIP-file is called -raspbian-buster-lite.zip and is located in directory /home/pragmalin/Downloads. Next, open up your terminal in the directory that holds the donwloaded ZIP-file. Visit this site to download the Raspbian Lite version in ZIP-file format, as illustrated in the following image: Therefore you do not need a desktop environment and the minimal Raspbian distribution, called “Raspbian Lite”, will do just fine. The intent is to setup your Raspberry PI 4 as a headless server. As a first step, download the Raspbian distribution. The Raspberry PI foundation created and maintains the Raspbian distribution. Raspbian is a Debian based distribution specifically for the Raspberry PI. Note that if you do have a keyboard and monitor connected to your Raspberry PI, perhaps the tutorial on how to perform a minimal install on your Raspberry PI is of interest to you. The estimated time to complete this tutorial is 15 to 30 minutes. All you need is a Raspberry PI 4, a micro SD-card and a power supply. Therefore I couldn’t hook it up to my monitor or TV, yet I still wanted to get my shiny new Raspberry PI 4 up and running.Īfter following the instructions in this tutorial, you have a clean Raspbian based server installed that is accessible over your network with SSH. In my case I simply forgot to order the micro HDMI to HDMI adapter. Other times you just do not feel like setting it all up.

Why would you want to do this? Sometimes you might not have an extra monitor, keyboard or mouse available. With this approach all you need is a network connection to control and administer your Raspberry PI 4. This is a server without a monitor, keyboard and mouse connected to it. This tutorial shows you how to setup your Raspberry PI 4 as a headless server.

Raspberry pi zero headless setup usb