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Raspberry Pi OS is a
Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...
operating system developed for the
Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi ( ) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...
line of
single-board computer A single-board computer (SBC) is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor(s), memory, input/output (I/O) and other features required of a functional computer. Single-board computers are commonly made as demonst ...
s. Based on
Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...
, a
Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...
, it is maintained by Raspberry Pi Holdings and optimized for Raspberry Pi hardware, with low memory requirements and a choice of 32-bit or 64-bit architectures. The 64-bit version is built directly from Debian for the
arm64 AArch64, also known as ARM64, is a 64-bit version of the ARM architecture family, a widely used set of computer processor designs. It was introduced in 2011 with the ARMv8 architecture and later became part of the ARMv9 series. AArch64 allows ...
platform, while the 32-bit version is derived from Raspbian, a customized Debian variant created in 2012 for the original Raspberry Pi. The operating system is compatible with all 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 LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...
and
Wolfram Mathematica Wolfram (previously known as Mathematica and Wolfram Mathematica) is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allows machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network ...
. The operating system can be downloaded and installed using the Raspberry Pi Imager utility, or purchased preloaded on a microSD card.


History

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 In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...
version. However, this version was not based on Raspbian, instead taking its
user space A modern computer operating system usually uses virtual memory to provide separate address spaces or regions of a single address space, called user space and kernel space. This separation primarily provides memory protection and hardware prote ...
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 In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...
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.


Features


User interface

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 A compositing manager, or compositor, is software that provides applications with an off-screen data buffer, buffer for each window, then Compositing, composites these window buffers into an image representing the screen and writes the result into ...
, which is based on wlroots, a modular Wayland implementation that underpins several other compositors. The operating system previously used the
X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...
. 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 macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
and
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
. 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.


Other components

Raspberry Pi OS originally included the Epiphany web browser, but transitioned to
Chromium Chromium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6 element, group 6. It is a steely-grey, Luster (mineralogy), lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium ...
in 2016.
Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...
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 YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
serve videos using the H.264 codec which is supported by the Raspberry Pi's hardware acceleration. , other pre-installed applications includes Geany, ImageMagick, Thonny, VNC Viewer and
VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source, software portability, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media Server (computing), server developed by the Vide ...
. , installations with the full suite of recommended software includes
Claws Mail Claws Mail is a free and open-source, C_(programming_language), C/GTK-based e-mail client, which is both lightweight and highly configurable. Claws Mail runs on both Microsoft Windows, Windows and Unix-like systems such as Linux, BSD, and Solaris ...
, Firebird database server,
KiCad KiCad ( ) is a free software suite for electronic design automation (EDA). It facilitates the design and simulation of electronic hardware for PCB manufacturing. It features an integrated environment for schematic capture, Printed circuit boar ...
,
LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...
,
Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
, Scratch, and
Wolfram Mathematica Wolfram (previously known as Mathematica and Wolfram Mathematica) is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allows machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network ...
, and additional font packages. Software can be installed via the APT (Advanced Package Tool)
command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...
, or through graphical front-ends such as the included Add/Remove Software tool, or by using third-party app stores like Pi-Apps.


Reception

According to Raspberry Pi Imager usage statistics, Raspberry Pi OS accounted for 67% of all operating system downloads for the Raspberry Pi in May 2025, followed by
Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...
at 9%. In a 2015 review, Jesse Smith of '' DistroWatch'' found that while Raspbian was not well-suited for heavier desktop workloads, it provided a functional experience with its lightweight environment. He noted that the system was responsive when running a modest number of applications, but struggled with more resource-intensive software such as
LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...
or
Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...
. In a January 2024 review for ''
Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...
'', Andrew Cunningham tested Raspberry Pi OS 12 (Bookworm) on a Pi 5 with 8 GB of RAM and found it functional for general-purpose desktop use, but with notable limitations. While it handled basic tasks like writing, web browsing, and audio editing well, the OS lacked modern conveniences such as window snapping, a notification center, refined window borders, and smooth
multi-monitor Multi-monitor, also called multi-display and multi-head, is the use of multiple physical display devices, such as Computer monitor, monitors, Television set, televisions, and Video projector, projectors, in order to increase the area available fo ...
performance. Its software ecosystem was also constrained by limited native app availability for ARM Linux, often requiring users to rely on web-based versions of services like Slack, Zoom, and Dropbox.


Microsoft repository controversy

In January 2021, the Raspberry Pi OS package raspberrypi-sys-mods added a Microsoft GPG encryption key and repository configuration to the APT package manager, enabling easier installation of
Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, commonly referred to as VS Code, is an integrated development environment developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, macOS and web browsers. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code comp ...
, a source code editor. As a result, the system contacted Microsoft’s servers during update checks, prompting concerns among users due to privacy considerations and Microsoft's once-adversarial history with the open source software community. The repository configuration was later removed.


Versions

Raspberry Pi OS is available in three main variants: * Raspberry Pi OS Lite – a minimal version without a desktop environment * Raspberry Pi OS with desktop – includes the desktop environment and a limited number of pre-installed applications * Raspberry Pi OS with desktop and recommended software – includes the desktop environment and the full suite of recommended pre-installed applications Each variant is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. A "Legacy" branch has been available since December 2021. It is based on the previous stable release of Debian, allowing for continued use of older software while still receiving security and hardware support updates. All standard variants (Lite, desktop, and desktop with recommended software) are offered in this legacy form. New major versions of Debian are released every two years, typically in the summer of odd-numbered years (e.g., 2023, 2025, 2027). Raspberry Pi OS ports of each new Debian release generally follow a few months later, usually in the fall. Raspberry Pi OS can be purchased pre-installed on a microSD card or downloaded as a .img disk image file to be written to an SD card or other media. Official documentation recommends a minimum of 16 GB for the Lite version and at least 32 GB for versions with a desktop environment. The Raspberry Pi Imager utility was introduced in March 2020 to simplify the installation of a disk image file onto an SD card or other media. Available for
macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
, Raspberry Pi OS,
Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...
, and
Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
, it allows users to download and write the disk image file in a single application. In addition to Raspberry Pi OS, the utility supports a variety of third-party operating systems.


Releases


References


External links

*
Raspberry Pi OS on DistroWatch
{{Linux distributions ARM Linux distributions Debian-based distributions Free software culture and documents Linux distributions Raspberry Pi