Raspberry Pi OS

Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) is a Debian-based operating system for Raspberry Pi. Since 2015, 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. The first version of Raspbian was developed by Mike Thompson and Peter Green as an independent project. The first build was completed in June 2012.

Raspberry Pi OS is specifically optimized for the compact single-board computers of the Raspberry Pi series with ARM CPUs. It runs on any Raspberry Pi except the Pico microcontroller. Raspberry Pi OS uses a modified LXDE as the desktop environment with the Openbox stacking window manager, along with a unique theme. The distribution comes with a copy of the algebra program Wolfram Mathematica and a version of Minecraft called Minecraft: Pi Edition (note that Minecraft: Pi Edition has not been installed since the Debian Bullseye update) as well as a stripped-down version of the Chromium web browser.

Features

User Interface

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

Package Management

Packages can be installed via APT, the Recommended Software application and with the Add/Remove Software tool, a GUI wrapper for APT.

Versions

• Raspberry Pi OS Lite
• Raspberry Pi OS
• Raspberry Pi OS Full