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.[1][2]

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.

History

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.[8][9][10] 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.[11]

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.[11]

The interface is designed to feel familiar to users of macOS and Microsoft Windows.[10] 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.[12]

Other components

Raspberry Pi OS originally included the Epiphany web browser, but transitioned to Chromium in 2016.[8] 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.[8][13] As of May 2025, other pre-installed applications includes Geany, ImageMagick, Thonny, VNC Viewer and VLC media player.[14]

As of May 2025, installations with the full suite of recommended software includes Claws Mail, Firebird database server, KiCad

screenshot	Raspberry Pi OS 13 screenshot.png
developer	Raspberry Pi Holdings
family	Unix-like
working state	Current
source model	Open-source
released	July 15, 2012
language count	23
language	Chinese · Czech · Danish · Dutch · English · Finnish · French · German · Greek · Hungarian · Italian · Japanese · Korean · Norwegian Bokmål · Polish · Portuguese · Russian · Slovak · Spanish · Swedish · Thai · Turkish · Ukrainian
package manager	APT, dpkg
supported platforms	armhf, aarch64
kernel type	Monolithic (Linux)
userland	GNU
influenced	Twister OS
influenced by	Debian
ui	labwc (Wayland-based)
license	Free and open-source software licenses (mainly GPL)
website	raspberrypi.com/software

History

Features

User interface

Other components

Reception

Microsoft repository controversy

Releases

External links

References