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Raspberry Pi OS
Raspberry Pi OS is a Unix-like operating system developed for the Raspberry Pi line of single-board computers. Based on Debian, a Linux distribution, it is maintained by Raspberry Pi Holdings and optimized for the Pi's hardware, with low memory requirements and support for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Originally released in July 2012 under the name Raspbian, it was introduced shortly after the launch of the first Raspberry Pi model.
The operating system is compatible with all Raspberry Pi models except the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. It is available in several configurations: a standard edition, a "Lite" version without a desktop environment, and a "Full" version that includes additional software such as LibreOffice and Wolfram Mathematica. The operating system is available as a free download and can be installed using the official Raspberry Pi Imager utility. It is also sold preloaded on official microSD cards.
Raspbian was first developed by Mike Thompson and Peter Green as an independent and unofficial port of Debian to the Raspberry Pi. The first build was released on 15 July 2012. As the Raspberry Pi had no officially provided operating system at the time, the Raspberry Pi Foundation built on the work by the Raspbian project and began producing and releasing their own operating system images of the software. The Foundation's first release of Raspbian, which now referred both to the community project as well as the official operating system, was announced on 10 September 2013.
On 28 May 2020, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a beta 64-bit version. However, this version was not based on Raspbian, instead taking its user space software from Debian. When the Foundation did not want to use the name Raspbian to refer to software that was not based on the Raspbian project, the name of the officially provided operating system images was changed to Raspberry Pi OS. This change was also carried over to the 32-bit images that they distributed, though it continued to be based on Raspbian. The 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS was officially released on 2 February 2022.
The Raspberry Pi OS user interface is optimized for Raspberry Pi hardware and tuned to have low base memory requirements, aiming to deliver a lightweight, fast, and energy-efficient desktop experience. It is built on the Wayland display protocol, using labwc as its compositing manager, which is based on wlroots, a modular Wayland implementation that underpins several other compositors.
The operating system previously used the X Window System. A transition to Wayland began with the Bullseye release in 2021, which introduced the mutter window manager to support both X and Wayland environments. In the Bookworm release of 2023, wayfire was adopted as a dedicated Wayland compositor. However, performance issues on older Raspberry Pi models prompted a search for a more suitable alternative. In 2024, developers ultimately selected labwc, a lightweight compositor that better matched the hardware's capabilities. Following collaboration and extensive optimization, labwc now offers performance comparable to X across all models, and Raspberry Pi OS now defaults to Wayland.
The interface is designed to feel familiar to users of macOS and Microsoft Windows. It provides a traditional desktop environment with a top menu bar that includes an application menu, shortcuts to frequently used programs, and system controls such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, volume, and clock.
Raspberry Pi OS originally included the Epiphany web browser, but transitioned to Chromium in 2016. Firefox was added as an additional pre-installed browser option in 2023. The included browsers come with uBlock, an ad-blocking extension, and h264ify, an extension that makes YouTube serve videos using the H.264 codec which is supported by the Raspberry Pi's hardware acceleration. As of May 2025[update], other pre-installed applications includes Geany, ImageMagick, Thonny, VNC Viewer and VLC media player.
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Raspberry Pi OS AI simulator
(@Raspberry Pi OS_simulator)
Raspberry Pi OS
Raspberry Pi OS is a Unix-like operating system developed for the Raspberry Pi line of single-board computers. Based on Debian, a Linux distribution, it is maintained by Raspberry Pi Holdings and optimized for the Pi's hardware, with low memory requirements and support for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Originally released in July 2012 under the name Raspbian, it was introduced shortly after the launch of the first Raspberry Pi model.
The operating system is compatible with all Raspberry Pi models except the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. It is available in several configurations: a standard edition, a "Lite" version without a desktop environment, and a "Full" version that includes additional software such as LibreOffice and Wolfram Mathematica. The operating system is available as a free download and can be installed using the official Raspberry Pi Imager utility. It is also sold preloaded on official microSD cards.
Raspbian was first developed by Mike Thompson and Peter Green as an independent and unofficial port of Debian to the Raspberry Pi. The first build was released on 15 July 2012. As the Raspberry Pi had no officially provided operating system at the time, the Raspberry Pi Foundation built on the work by the Raspbian project and began producing and releasing their own operating system images of the software. The Foundation's first release of Raspbian, which now referred both to the community project as well as the official operating system, was announced on 10 September 2013.
On 28 May 2020, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a beta 64-bit version. However, this version was not based on Raspbian, instead taking its user space software from Debian. When the Foundation did not want to use the name Raspbian to refer to software that was not based on the Raspbian project, the name of the officially provided operating system images was changed to Raspberry Pi OS. This change was also carried over to the 32-bit images that they distributed, though it continued to be based on Raspbian. The 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS was officially released on 2 February 2022.
The Raspberry Pi OS user interface is optimized for Raspberry Pi hardware and tuned to have low base memory requirements, aiming to deliver a lightweight, fast, and energy-efficient desktop experience. It is built on the Wayland display protocol, using labwc as its compositing manager, which is based on wlroots, a modular Wayland implementation that underpins several other compositors.
The operating system previously used the X Window System. A transition to Wayland began with the Bullseye release in 2021, which introduced the mutter window manager to support both X and Wayland environments. In the Bookworm release of 2023, wayfire was adopted as a dedicated Wayland compositor. However, performance issues on older Raspberry Pi models prompted a search for a more suitable alternative. In 2024, developers ultimately selected labwc, a lightweight compositor that better matched the hardware's capabilities. Following collaboration and extensive optimization, labwc now offers performance comparable to X across all models, and Raspberry Pi OS now defaults to Wayland.
The interface is designed to feel familiar to users of macOS and Microsoft Windows. It provides a traditional desktop environment with a top menu bar that includes an application menu, shortcuts to frequently used programs, and system controls such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, volume, and clock.
Raspberry Pi OS originally included the Epiphany web browser, but transitioned to Chromium in 2016. Firefox was added as an additional pre-installed browser option in 2023. The included browsers come with uBlock, an ad-blocking extension, and h264ify, an extension that makes YouTube serve videos using the H.264 codec which is supported by the Raspberry Pi's hardware acceleration. As of May 2025[update], other pre-installed applications includes Geany, ImageMagick, Thonny, VNC Viewer and VLC media player.
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