Raspberry Pi has introduced a brand new model of its Debian-derived Linux distribution tailor-made particularly for its fashionable single-board pc and computer-on-module households, Raspberry Pi OS — and it is prone to be the final Debian Bookworm launch earlier than a transfer to Debian Trixie.
“As a lot of you already know, Debian Linux works on a two-year launch cycle — each odd-numbered yr a brand new main model is launched, and it being 2025 there will probably be one within the subsequent few months,” explains Raspberry Pi’s Simon Lengthy of the corporate’s plans for the following working system refresh. “So that is most likely the ultimate launch of Raspberry Pi OS which relies on Debian ‘Bookworm,’ earlier than Debian ‘Trixie’ is launched this summer time.”
Raspberry Pi’s newest working system is offered to obtain now — and would be the final to be primarily based on Debian Bookworm. (📷: Raspberry Pi)
Raspberry Pi moved its in-house working system from Debian Bullseye to Debian Bookworm again in October 2023, and it introduced a giant change together with it: a transfer away from the standard X Window System to the newer Wayland, by way of the Wayfire show administration system. Whereas there have been some hiccups alongside the best way, the transfer seems to have gone easily — and is actually in no threat of being reversed within the new launch, even when customers are given the choice of manually switching again to the previous approach of doing issues.
The most important user-facing modifications within the new Raspberry Pi OS are associated to native safety: Lengthy and colleagues have been engaged on a model of the “swaylock” display screen locker, permitting the gadget to be locked with a password required to unlock — and that includes relatively extra rationalization than the stark white vacancy of the inventory software. The flexibility to have a tool robotically log in with out a password has additionally been tweaked, with the choice now specified individually for console and desktop periods — stopping somebody bypassing swaylock by merely switching to an automatically-logged-in console.
Among the many modifications is a shift to GNOME’s printer administration software, to make set up and configuration simpler. (📷: Raspberry Pi)
Different modifications embody a brand new software for including and managing printers, ported from the GNOME desktop setting, improved touchscreen dealing with with the power to simply change between native contact and mouse emulation modes, enhancements for digital keyboard operation on multiple-monitor techniques, boot-up time enhancements, a shift from “zenity” for dialog prompts to what Lengthy calls “a extra environment friendly software of our personal” dubbed “zenoty,” and the uBlock Origin adblocker being faraway from the Chromium browser in favor of uBlock Origin Lite — required by Google’s latest elimination of Manifest V2 assist for plugins.
The brand new model of Raspberry Pi OS is now out there to obtain from the official web site, and is lively in each the Raspberry Pi Imager software and the community installer on appropriate Raspberry Pi units; these at the moment working a Bookworm-based Raspberry Pi OS can obtain the identical updates in-place by working sudo apt replace && sudo apt full-upgrade, potential adopted by sudo apt set up rpinters to modify to the brand new printer administration utility if it hasn’t been put in robotically.
