Raspberry Pi OS

Welcome to the world of Raspberry Pi OS, the official and recommended operating system for your Raspberry Pi device.

Tailored specifically for the Raspberry Pi hardware, this free operating system is based on the robust Debian architecture, providing a reliable and versatile platform for hobbyists, educators, and professionals alike.

Raspberry Pi OS is not just an operating system; it's a gateway to a vast universe of over 35,000 packages—pre-compiled, packaged, and ready for easy installation.

Whether you're setting up a home server, diving into programming, or exploring digital making, Raspberry Pi OS offers the tools and stability you need to bring your projects to life.

Under continuous development, the Raspberry Pi OS team focuses on enhancing the compatibility and performance of Debian packages, ensuring that your Raspberry Pi runs smoothly and efficiently.

What is the Debian Architecture

Debian is a versatile and robust Linux distribution that has been around since 1993, created by Ian Murdock.

It's well-known for its commitment to free open-source software, though it includes non-free software in its repositories.

Debian is developed by a community-supported Debian Project and uses its own package management system, dpkg, with a frontend, APT, for handling software installation and updates.

Debian offers three branches: Stable, Testing, and Unstable (Sid), each serving different stability and testing needs. It supports a wide range of hardware platforms and features multiple desktop environments like GNOME, KDE, and Xfce. Debian's policy of free software is guided by its Social Contract and Debian Free Software Guidelines.

The distribution is known for its rigorous testing and release process, making its stable branch particularly robust for production environments. It forms the basis for many other Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Debian is maintained by volunteers and relies on donations for funding. It's praised for its extensive documentation and community support through mailing lists and forums.

Boot Media

Raspberry Pi models lack onboard storage, so you have to supply it.

By default, the Raspberry Pi boots from a microSD card.

But since the release of the Raspberry Pi 3, new Pis have been able to boot from a USB mass storage device as well. So you can boot your Raspberry Pi from an operating system image installed on any supported media: microSD cards are used commonly, but USB storage, network storage, and storage connected via a PCIe HAT are also available.

Your Raspberry Pi automatically boots from the microSD slot when the slot contains a card.

Recommended SD cards

We recommend using an SD card with at least 32GB of storage for Raspberry Pi OS installations.

For Raspberry Pi OS Lite, we recommend at least 16GB.

You can use any SD card with a capacity of less than 2TB.

Capacities above 2TB are currently not supported due to limitations in the MBR. As with any other boot media, you’ll see improved performance on SD cards with faster read and write speeds.

Because of a hardware limitation, the following devices will only boot from a boot partition of 256GB or less:

• Raspberry Pi Zero

• Raspberry Pi 1

• early Raspberry Pi 2 models with the BCM2836 SoC

Other operating systems have different requirements. Check the documentation for your operating system for capacity requirements.