Unless you are confident about how to hold a circuit board whilst pushing plugs into sockets from various directions I would get a case*The best approach is quite obvious:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentati ... arted.html
Buying the Pi branded SD card with the OS pre-installed means you don't have to use another computer to get started**
* put the board in the case before inserting the SD card
**if you buy two cards and a USB uSD card reader you can get out of trouble if you screw something up experimenting on the first and the Pi won't boot.
I have been putting off the move to Trixie but prompted by this discussion I put a pre-loaded SD card in my Pi4 and followed the first-boot instructions. Ten minutes or so later here I am in the browser. (full disclosure - I booted to Bookworm first so I knew the monitor and ethernet connection worked)
Statistics: Posted by PDM1950 — Fri Jan 02, 2026 9:45 am