New Version of Raspberry Pi OS Released - Adds Wayland and Pi Optimized Version of Firefox

A new version of the Raspberry Pi OS has been released. This new version updates the base OS from Debian 11 (Bullseye) to Debian 12 (Bookworm). Also there are lots of Raspberry Pi specific goodies including support for the Raspberry Pi 5, switching to Wayland and Wayfire for the desktop, and a Pi optimized version of Firefox.
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#garyexplains

[unicaller]

Sounds like a bunch of great updates for anyone using a PI as a desktop.

[kenworks]

Thank You Gary, I've been using Wayland on other PC distros and found it mature enough for daily driving.

[dansshade]

Amazing job from PI teams making newer wayland-based version of UI look like the old one to maintain continuity in experience.

[MadalinIgnisca]

3:13 the primary purpose for wayland has been security first, simpler and structured api and performance is not an issue at all, except on strange gpus

[trevorberridge]

This release is the first time in over a year that I've been able to install Raspberry Pi OS on my 8Gb Pi without having to use extra command line code to get it functioning normally. I'm also really pleased that the file access is now better resembling the kind of flexibility that I'd only previously seen in Ubuntu.

[TheEulerID]

Whilst it is not mentioned, the Raspberry Pi 400 counts as a Pi 4 as far as this release is concerned, which makes sense.

[An.Individual]

Losing RealVNC is a real blow, I use it a lot.

[--.--.--]

Did an upgrade of my Pi OS bullseye and it didn't go right, stuck it in the drawer and walked away. Watched this video and decided to get it back out and do a clean install. Pi now works great. Thanks for all the information about the new version. It made me take the extra effort and just do the clean install and start over.

[bazoo]

Sounds very nice.

Regarding Wayland: I've heard on mamy places that the maintenance of Xorg X11 components has practically stopped. One of the reason developers cite is incredible amounts of historical baggage nobody uses any more but one has to implement in order to have a compliant X11 server.

OK - so X11 is for all practical purposes dead. But one thing about network transparency worries me: we do have a "remote desktop"-equivalent functionality with VNC. But X11 featured network transparency on program level - any client could talk to any display server, anywhere on the network. People typically used that on large installations - one X terminal (not xterm - a machine running a X11 display server) would run display and human input services for any number of clients from all over the network (indispensable to, say, admins). Is that kind of functionality available 8or at least planned) for Wayland?

[mdexterc]

All this Wayland news is really exciting! Combined with news about Presonus porting their daw to linux, I think it's safe to say next year is the year of linux desktop

[daviddossor]

The new Pi Os rocks and just highlights why you buy a Raspberry Pi, support
My first gen Pi4 now runs just over 100 MGHz higher, cooler and rock solid no random crashes...
My Pi3 B+ runs harder on cpu, gpu, core and mem .... The Pi3 B+is far quicker and far more usable although mousepad seems to have a problem starting up quickly, I found Pluma does not...
The Plank dock works 32 bit system on the Pi3 B+ but not on the Pi4 64 bit system ..
The one thing that is missing at the moment from the menu is the Themes option under Preferences... You can however install the KDE desktop and ever thing works great...

Well done Raspberry Pi Foundation....

[hammockdweller]

So, does that mean I can't do screen sharing from the PI to my iPad anymore? I couldn't find a version of Tiger VNC for iOS.

[MarkEmeryPhotography]

My wife uses a Pi4 Desktop. I spent hours upgrading it due to Chromium issues, but will have to spend hours downgrading. Why? LIbreOffice needing X. XWayland is a nightmare, kills spreadsheet navigation performance. Cursor down a row, wait a second for everything to shift.

[markwarburton]

Very compact and informative, as always, Gary. It will be interesting to see what the real world performance differences in power efficiency, memory consumption and benchmarking between Bookworm and Bullseye will be on the 4B and 5.

[MrMorokiatt]

No doubt about it Firefox now is better for 1080 playback. Makes the Pi5 a GAME CHANGER.

[boink]

I'm so excited. Now the next problem: finally getting a Raspberry 5. Will there be a another year long wait once you've bought it?

[RWBHere]

Thanks Gary. The Pi is gradually transforming into e pretty potent little computer.

[genkiferal]

sounds like a combo or a newness that will come with lots of problems. makes me wanna stay with x11 until the kinks are worked out.

[mikeg]

Thanks Gary! Some very helpful information in there - particularly I think alot of people would overlook the vnc nuances.

[julioprado]

Great to see Wayfire getting some love!