Raspberry Pi OS
Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) is a Debian-based operating system for Raspberry Pi. Since 2013, it has been officially provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation as the primary operating system for the Raspberry Pi family of compact single-board computers.

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 decided to build off of the work done 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 they were releasing a beta 64-bit version of their official operating system. However, the 64-bit version was not based on Raspbian, instead taking its userland from Debian directly. Since 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 carried over to the 32-bit version as well, though it continued to be based on Raspbian. The 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS was officially released on February 2nd, 2022.  

Raspberry Pi OS is highly optimized for the Raspberry Pi line of compact single-board computers with ARM CPUs. It runs on every Raspberry Pi except the Pico microcontroller. Raspberry Pi OS uses a modified LXDE as its desktop environment with the Openbox stacking window manager, along with a unique theme. The default distribution is shipped with a copy of the algebra program Wolfram Mathematica, VLC, and a lightweight version of the Chromium web browser.

Features

User interface 
Raspberry Pi OS's desktop environment, PIXEL, looks similar to many common desktops, such as macOS and Microsoft Windows, and is based on LXDE. The menu bar is positioned at the top and contains an application menu and shortcuts to Terminal, Chromium, and File Manager. On the right is a Bluetooth menu, a Wi-Fi menu, volume control, and a digital clock.

Package management 
Packages can be installed via APT, the Recommended Software app, and by using the Add/Remove Software tool, a GUI wrapper for APT.

Components 
PCManFM 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 used Epiphany as the web browser, but switched to Chromium with the launch of its redesigned desktop.

Raspberry Pi OS comes with many beginner IDEs, such as Thonny Python IDE, Mu Editor, and Greenfoot. It also ships with educational software like Scratch and Bookshelf.

Reception 
Jesse Smith from DistroWatch reviewed Raspberry Pi OS (then Raspbian) in 2015:
Based on download statistics from the Raspberry Pi Imager, 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 past month, as of 24 February 2022.

Microsoft repository controversy 
In late January 2021, the Raspberry Pi OS package  added a trusted GPG key and  entry to APT. This addition made it easier for users running Raspberry Pi OS to install Visual Studio Code, a source code editor developed by Microsoft. However, this change also meant that every time the system checked for updates, it would query Microsoft's package servers. Given Microsoft's once adversarial history with Linux, this from of telemetry upset some users. The GPG key and APT entry would later be removed.

Release history

Versions 
Raspberry Pi OS has 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)
Raspberry Pi OS also has two legacy versions:

 Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Legacy) (32-bit)
 Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy) with desktop (32-bit)

Raspberry Pi OS Lite is the smallest version and doesn't include a desktop environment. Raspberry Pi OS with desktop includes the Pixel desktop environment. Raspberry Pi OS with desktop and recommended software additionally 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 in the older Buster version of Debian.

All versions are distributed as .img disk image files. These files can then be flashed on to microSD cards where Raspberry Pi OS runs. In March 2020, the Raspberry Pi Foundation also published the Raspberry Pi Imager, a custom disk flasher that allows for the installation of Raspberry Pi OS as well as other operating systems designed for the Raspberry Pi, including RetroPie, Kodi OS, and others.

The Raspberry Pi documentation recommends at least a 4GB microSD card for Raspberry Pi OS Lite, and at least a 8GB microSD card for all other versions.

See also

 Debian

References

External links 
 
Raspberry Pi OS on DistroWatch

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