Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) is a

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X 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 Unix-li ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

based on the

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

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 association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic ...

family of compact

single-board computers 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 demonstrat ...

. First developed independently in 2012, it has been produced as the primary operating system for these boards since 2013, distributed by the

Raspberry Pi Foundation The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a British charity and company founded in 2009 to promote the study of basic computer science in schools, and is responsible for developing the Raspberry Pi single-board computers. Foundation The Raspberry Pi Foun ...

. Raspberry Pi OS is highly optimized for the Raspberry Pi with

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...

CPUs. It runs on every Raspberry Pi except the Pico microcontroller. Raspberry Pi OS uses a modified

LXDE LXDE (abbreviation for Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) is a free desktop environment with comparatively low resource requirements. This makes it especially suitable for use on older or resource-constrained personal computers such as netb ...

desktop environment with the Openbox stacking window manager, along with a unique theme. The default distribution is shipped with a copy of the computer algebra system

Wolfram Mathematica Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimizat ...

, VLC, and a lightweight version of the

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hardne ...

web browser.

History

Raspberry Pi OS was first developed by Mike Thompson and Peter Green as Raspbian, an independent and unofficial port of Debian to the Raspberry Pi. The first build was released on July 15, 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 version 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 September 10th, 2013. On May 28th, 2020, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a beta

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit Integer (computer science), integers, memory addresses, or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing unit, CPUs and arithmetic logic unit, ALUs are those ...

version. However, this version was not based on Raspbian, instead taking its

user space A modern computer operating system usually segregates virtual memory into user space and kernel space. Primarily, this separation serves to provide memory protection and hardware protection from malicious or errant software behaviour. Kernel ...

software from Debian GNU/Linux. 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 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 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

version, though it continued to be based on Raspbian. The 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS was officially released on February 2nd, 2022.

Features

User interface

Raspberry Pi OS has a desktop environment, PIXEL, based on

, which looks similar to many common desktops, such as

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. The desktop has a background image. A

menu bar A menu bar is a graphical control element which contains drop-down menus. The menu bar's purpose is to supply a common housing for window- or application-specific menus which provide access to such functions as opening files, interacting wi ...

is positioned at the top and contains an application menu and shortcuts to a web browser (

), file manager, and

terminal Terminal may refer to: Computing Hardware * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together * Terminal (telecommunication), a device communicating over a line * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output dev ...

. The other end of the menu bar shows a

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

menu, Wi-Fi menu, volume control, and clock. The desktop can also be changed from its default appearance, such as repositioning the menu bar.

Package management

Packages can be installed via

APT Apt. is an abbreviation for apartment. Apt may also refer to: Places * Apt Cathedral, a former cathedral, and national monument of France, in the town of Apt in Provence * Apt, Vaucluse, a commune of the Vaucluse département of France * A ...

, the ''Recommended Software'' app, and by using the ''Add/Remove Software'' tool, a

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

wrapper for APT.

Components

PCManFM PCMan File Manager (PCManFM) is a file manager application, developed by Hong Jen Yee () from Taiwan, which is meant to be a replacement for GNOME Files, Dolphin and Thunar. PCManFM is the standard file manager in LXDE, also developed by the same ...

is a file browser allowing quick access to all areas of the computer, and was redesigned in the first Raspberry Pi OS Buster release (2019-06-20). Raspberry Pi OS originally distributed the web browser

Epiphany Epiphany may refer to: * Epiphany (feeling), an experience of sudden and striking insight Religion * Epiphany (holiday), a Christian holiday celebrating the revelation of God the Son as a human being in Jesus Christ ** Epiphany season, or Epiph ...

, but switched to

with the launch of its redesigned desktop. The built-in browser comes preinstalled with

uBlock Origin uBlock Origin (; "" ) is a free and open-source browser extension for content filtering, including ad blocking. The extension is available for Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Firefox, Opera, Pale Moon, as well as versions of Safari prior to 13 ...

and h264ify. Raspberry Pi OS comes with many beginner

IDEs Ides or IDES may refer to: Calendar dates * Ides (calendar), a day in the Roman calendar that fell roughly in the middle of the month. In March, May, July, and October it was the 15th day of the month; in other months it was the 13th. **Ides of Mar ...

, such as Thonny Python IDE, Mu Editor, and

Greenfoot Greenfoot is an integrated development environment using Java or Stride designed primarily for educational purposes at the high school and undergraduate level. It allows easy development of two-dimensional graphical applications, such as simulatio ...

. It also ships with educational software, such as Scratch and Bookshelf.

Reception

The download statistics from the Raspberry Pi Imager indicate that Raspberry Pi OS is by far the most used operating system on the Raspberry Pi, accounting for 68.44% of all OS downloads in the month preceding 24 February 2022. Jesse Smith from

DistroWatch DistroWatch is a website which provides news, distribution pages hit rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/ open source Unix-like operating systems. It now contains information ...

reviewed Raspbian in 2015:

Microsoft repository controversy

In late January 2021, the Raspberry Pi OS package ''raspberrypi-sys-mods'' added a trusted GPG key and configuration entry in the

package manager. This addition made it easier to install

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, also commonly referred to as VS Code, is a source-code editor made by Microsoft with the Electron Framework, for Windows, Linux and macOS. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code complet ...

, a

source code editor A source-code editor is a text editor program designed specifically for editing source code of computer programs. It may be a standalone application or it may be built into an integrated development environment (IDE) or web browser. Source-code ed ...

developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

. This change initiated a query to Microsoft's package servers every time the system checked for updates. Given Microsoft's once adversarial history with Linux, this form of

telemetry Telemetry is the in situ data collection, collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic data transmission, transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Gr ...

upset some users. The changes were later removed.

Versions

Raspberry Pi OS is produced in three installation versions: * Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32-bit & 64-bit) * Raspberry Pi OS with desktop (32-bit & 64-bit) * Raspberry Pi OS with desktop and recommended software (32-bit) Two legacy versions are recognized: * Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Legacy) (32-bit) * Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy) with desktop (32-bit) Raspberry Pi OS Lite is the smallest version, and does not include a desktop environment. The desktop version includes the Pixel desktop environment. Raspberry Pi OS with desktop and recommended software comes pre-installed with additional productivity software, such as Libre Office. On December 2nd, 2021, the Raspberry Pi Foundation released Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy), a branch of the operating system that continued to receive security and hardware compatibility updates but was based on ''Buster'', an older version of Debian. All versions are distributed as disk image files, having the file extension ''img'', intended to be flashed to

microSD cards Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary format, proprietary non-volatile memory, non-volatile Flash memory, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association, SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices. The s ...

from which Raspberry Pi OS is booted. In March 2020, the Raspberry Pi Foundation published the Raspberry Pi Imager, a custom disk installer for Raspberry Pi OS, as well as other operating systems designed for the Raspberry Pi, including RetroPi, and Kodi OS, The Raspberry Pi documentation recommends at least a 4 GiB

microSD card Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary format, proprietary non-volatile memory, non-volatile Flash memory, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association, SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices. The s ...

for Raspberry Pi OS Lite, and at least an 8 GiB microSD card for all other versions.

Releases

References

External links

*
Raspberry Pi OS on DistroWatch
{{Linux distributions ARM Linux distributions ARM operating systems Debian-based distributions Free software culture and documents Linux distributions Operating systems based on the Linux kernel Raspberry Pi