Getting 'Flash' 'Running'

Sorry for the quotation marks, but it's not really Flash, but rather an open source version, called Gnash, that you will be 'running.'  Yeah, the quotation marks around 'running' are important too.  Remember that the Pi is not a very powerful machine, and any Flash heavy page is going to bog it down - especially since most browsers already max out the Raspberry's CPU and RAM.  You certainly won't be able to use it to watch Youtube videos.  :(  If you still need to run Flash, for whatever reason, here's how.

Step 1:  Type the following into the terminal:
sudo apt-get install browser-plugin-gnash

Step 2:  You will need to restart the browser (if you have it open).

You can now play (very simple small) Flash Games and view annoying advertising.  Congrats!  :)

Getting Started

First things first, we have to get some kind of operating system running so we can use our Raspberry Pi.  I chose Raspbian because it has hard float, is recommended by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and (this was the clincher) because portmanteaus make me smile (I am an English major after all).  If you are a complete and total noob, then it might be easier to buy an SD card with Raspbian (or one of the other operating systems) already installed.  If you'd like to know how to make your own, though, here is a step-by-step.

Step 1:  Download the latest Raspbian version from here:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

(it was 2012-09-18-wheezy-raspbian.zip for me).

Step 2:  I'm going to assume that most noobs will be running windows on their home machine, and thus will need to download and unzip Win32DiskImager.

Step 3:  Insert a blank compatible SD card in your SD card reader, open up Win32DiskImager, and select the image you downloaded in step 1 (it should automatically select your SD card as the write destination).

Step 4:  Click the "Write" button.

Step 5:  Wait (patiently or impatiently) for your SD card to finish writing.

Step 6:  Eject it from your SD card reader, insert it in your (unpowered) Raspberry Pi, then connect everything up and go!

Step 7:  Set Up.