The Raspberry Pi has become the most popular micro-computer that we can find. Its price, and the power it offers us, make many see it as a gadget that cannot be missing at home, or in many companies and professional environments. This micro-computer is being manufactured using OpenSource hardware, and to make it work it is necessary to install (on your micro-sd) an operating system. And although the best known is Raspberry Pi OS, Raspbian , there are a large number of additional operating systems, much more specific, to be able to give the Raspberry the use we want.
Raspberry Pi OS has a number of advantages and disadvantages. Among its advantages we can highlight that we are facing an official operating system, very complete and full of functions and features. However, having such a large and complete distro implies a loss of resources and performance that, in a device with limited power, it can be quite noticeable.
Fortunately, in addition to this system, there are many others that allow us to make the most of its potential. Let’s see some of the most interesting.
DietPi, a 400 megabyte Debian for the Raspberry Pi
The first of the alternative systems that we are going to talk about is DietPi . This system is characterized by being based on Debian, just like Raspberry Pi OS, but with the difference that it occupies 3 times less space than Raspberry Pi OS Lite, leaving it at only 400 MB. A very optimized distro ideal to get the most out of both the RAM and the CPU.
Its appearance may not be the prettiest, but we are facing one of the lightest distros on the market, which will offer us the maximum performance to the micro-computer hardware. Also, being based on Debian, we can install any package or program that we need.
We can download the distro from this link .
Lakka, the all-in-one for retro gaming
The Raspberry Pi isn’t just for building a professional server. Its possibilities go much further. And one of the most interesting that we find is the possibility of functioning as a retro games center. We can install on Raspberry Pi OS any emulator kit for this function, but if we want to dedicate it 100% to this work, we can better choose to use a dedicated distro such as Lakka .
This distro offers us an interface similar to that of the PlayStation 3 from which we will have access to all our games and all the roms. One of the best distros for retrogaming that we can find that does not depend on any other frontend as with RetroPie.
We can download the latest version of Lakka from here .
OpenMediaVault, your own home NAS
Do you need a NAS server, but don’t want to spend a lot of money? OpenMediaVault is an operating system for the Raspberry Pi that will allow us to turn the micro-computer into a NAS server. This distro will allow us to enable or disable the services that we want to have available, as well as enjoy the most used network protocols.
One of its best features is that it can be fully managed remotely from its web panel. The best way to mount our own NAS at home, but in a much cheaper way.
We can download this system from your website .
Android, turns the Raspberry Pi into a “smartphone”
Sure we all know Android , but we associate it with mobile devices. However, there are projects that have been in charge of taking this operating system to other platforms. And one of them is the Raspberry Pi. By installing this operating system on the micro-computer we will be able to have all kinds of applications and games as if we were running them on our mobile. These distros are also prepared to work with keyboard and mouse, and even to connect to TV and act as a multimedia center.
Of course, the Android distros for Raspberry Pi are not official. Therefore, some functions (such as Google Play Services) may give us problems.
We can download an Android rom for the Raspberry Pi from here .
