Raspberry Pi OS

Raspberry Pi OS
Raspberry Pi OS (Trixie) running its default desktop environment
DeveloperRaspberry Pi Holdings
OS familyUnix-like
Working stateCurrent
Source modelOpen-source
Initial release15 July 2012 (2012-07-15)
Latest release6.1 / 24 November 2025 
Available in23 languages
List of languages
  • Chinese
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Norwegian Bokmål
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Slovak
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
Update method
Package managerAPT, dpkg
Supported platformsarmhf, aarch64
Kernel typeMonolithic (Linux)
UserlandGNU
InfluencedTwister OS
Influenced byDebian
Default
user interface
labwc (Wayland-based)
LicenseFree and open-source software licenses (mainly GPL)
Official websiteraspberrypi.com/software

Raspberry Pi OS is a Unix-like operating system developed for the Raspberry Pi line of single-board computers. Based on Debian, a Linux distribution, it is maintained by Raspberry Pi Holdings and optimized for the Pi's hardware, with low memory requirements and support for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Originally released in July 2012 under the name Raspbian, it was introduced shortly after the launch of the first Raspberry Pi model.

The operating system is compatible with all Raspberry Pi models except the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. It is available in several configurations: a standard edition, a "Lite" version without a desktop environment, and a "Full" version that includes additional software such as LibreOffice and Wolfram Mathematica. The operating system is available as a free download and can be installed using the official Raspberry Pi Imager utility. It is also sold preloaded on official microSD cards.