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With the launch of the 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 computer, the Raspberry Pi Foundation also unveiled today the renaming of their Debian-based Raspbian Linux operating system as Raspberry Pi OS.
Developed in-house by the Raspberry Fi Foundation as the primary operating system for the popular Raspberry Pi single-board computers, Raspbian is based on the well-known Debian GNU/Linux operating system and uses a modified LXDE desktop environment called PIXEL or simply the Raspberry Pi Desktop.
In an attempt to make Raspbian more popular and bump its adoption amongst the ever-growing Raspberry Pi community, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has decided to change the name of their GNU/Linux distribution after more than five years to Raspberry Pi OS.
“As our community grows, we want to make sure it’s as easy as possible for new users to find our recommended operating system for Raspberry Pi. We think the new name will help more people feel confident in using our computers and our software,” said Raspberry Pi Foundation’s founder Eben Upton.
Until now, Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) was only available as a 32-bit image for all supported Raspberry Pi models, but a 64-bit (ARM64) variant is now ready for mass testing, built against the Debian GNU/Linux’s ARM64 port.
Why a 64-bit userland? Raspberry Pi Foundation has the answer, saying that it’s for power users who want to map all the 8GB RAM of the latest Raspberry Pi 4 model into the address space of a single process.
However, the upcoming 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS can only be installed on Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi 4 models. If you want to take it for a test drive, you can download an early beta image right now from here.
Raspberry Pi Foundation said that besides the 64-bit userland, nothing changes in terms of included applications and desktop environment. You can download the latest Raspberry Pi OS release from here.
Image: Raspberry Fi Foundation
Last updated 4 years ago
