14 DAY TRIAL // The Raspberry Pi Foundation released a new version of their Debian-based Raspbian operating system for the tiny Raspberry Pi single-board computers with various improvements and latest updates.
Running the long-term supported Linux 4.14.71 kernel, the Raspbian 2018-10-09 release comes with support for Raspberry Pi Foundation's Raspberry Pi PoE (Power over Ethernet) HAT, a small accessory for the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ SBC that allows users to power the board via an Ethernet cable.
Raspbian 2018-10-09 also updates the startup wizard by implementing support for assigning keyboard layouts by country, a new option to use the US keyboard layout in preference to country-specific option, the ability to display the computer's IP address on first page, and support for checking for Wi-Fi networks.
Furthermore, Raspbian's startup wizard now lets users install language packs for the LibreOffice office suite and other Open Source applications, as well as to offer much-improved keyboard navigation. Also, the startup wizard and Raspberry Pi Configuration now work properly with passwords containing shell characters.
Improved Wi-Fi and Bluetooth coexistence, updated components
Among other noteworthy improvements included in the new Raspbian release, we can mention support for the network plugin to hide the Wi-Fi passwords by default, support for the battery indicator plugin to deal with Raspberry Pi-top hardware monitor crashes, and support for dhcpcd to work with 3G devices.
It also brings the ability to prevent software updates to change configuration files by creating a hidden ~/.config/.lock file, adds hardware acceleration to FFMpeg, improves Wi-Fi and Bluetooth coexistence, improves the Bluetooth ALSA interface, and adds a script to run fake-hwclock before systemd-fsck-root.
Updated components included in this release are Adobe Flash Player 31.0.0.108 and RealVNC Server 6.3.1. Scratch 2's GPIO and SenseHAT plugins were updated as well with support for setting a pin from the drop-down list instead of free text and the ability to swap X and Y axis values for LED arrays respectively.
New packages included in Raspbian 2018-10-09 are libav-tools and ssh-import-id, and the Mathematica software was removed. You can download the Raspbian 2018-10-09 image right now through our web portal for new installations, but existing users need only to update their installations to receive the latest updates and improvements by running the command below in a terminal emulator.
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get full-upgrade