Making operating systems more appetizing with the raspberry Pi

In 2012, Ebon Upton started the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which introduced the Raspberry Pi (RPi) as a $35 basic computer. The goal was to reignite public interest in programming and increase enrollment in college computer science. Today, the third RPi iteration features a multicore processor, a small GPU for display graphics, WiFi, Bluetooth, and USB connectivity. Surprisingly, even though the RPi has become very popular with the public and college students for do-it-yourself projects and maker culture, instructors have not widely used it to teach operating systems concepts. In this paper, I share my experience using the RPi in my Operating Systems class. The paper makes the following contributions: Pedagogical advantages of using the RPi over other traditional and cloud-based methods to teach operating systems concepts; Challenges for the instructor and students running many RPis in a classroom setting over the campus enterprise network; Advantages of using the RPi to stimulate student creativity and motivate them to design and implement their own related computing projects.