Surely on more than one occasion you have been curious to experience how macOS works . The problem with Apple‘s operating system is that it’s limited to its own computers, and while there are ways to mount your own macOS-based PC, the system requirements are so specific that you’re likely to have trouble getting things up and running. But you know what? The Raspberry Pi has the solution once again.
It is not Mac, but it seems
Today we are going to tell you how to get a fully functional operating system for Raspberry Pi that looks almost the same as MacOS. The secret is in iRaspbian, a distribution based on Raspbian that allows you to enjoy a very complete operating system with which you can work comfortably with the only requirement of needing a Raspberry Pi 4 . The idea of its creator was to have Box86 and Retropie in the same interface, so you can get an idea of the possibilities.
In our case we have been able to test the system with a RaspBerry Pi 3 Model B, and although it starts without problems, the performance is quite limited and there are problems with the rendering of the windows and the graphic acceleration. In the official documentation of iRaspbian they recommend activating GL Open from the terminal, but in our case it has not improved much.
How to install iRaspbian on a Raspberry Pi
The installation process is incredibly simple, since we only have to download the image from the operating system and save it to a microSD card. Then we leave you the iRaspbian download link and the necessary steps to prepare the microSD card.
- Download iRaspbian or visit the official website.
- Download the BalenaEtcher program , which will serve to install the image.
- The compressed file will include an image without an extension. Add the .img extension for BalenaEtcher to identify it.
- Open BalenaEtcher, select the image and the destination drive and click install.
- When the process is finished, all you have to do is insert the microSD card into your Raspberry Pi and turn it on. You will come to the login window.
- To login you must enter the password raspberry
You can modify this password by entering the passwd command in the terminal. If what you want is to change the administrator password, you must enter your passwd .
What can i do with iRaspbian?
In addition to enjoying an environment very similar to that of MacOS, this operating system includes a large number of tools with which you can practically do everything. If you install the system on a Raspberry Pi 4, you will have no problems viewing content from streaming services such as YouTube or Netflix, in addition to being able to play some of the games that are included by default. These are some of the applications included in the installation:
- Chromium Media Edition : Allows you to play DRM content such as Netflix or other streaming services.
- Box86: It is a Linux emulator for ARM devices that allows you to run games that use OpenGL 2.1.
- Gimp: Powerful graphic editor similar to Photoshop.
- Retropie: The emulation suite par excellence.
- Win98 VM : A virtual machine based on Windows 98.
- Android Mirroring : Allows you to connect an Android phone to take control and see a mirror image of what is happening on the screen.
- Steam: A Steam client under development that allows access to our games library.
- MacOS 9 : MacOS 9 virtual machine with which to keep an eye on the old operating system.
How to activate GL Open on Raspberry Pi 3
If you are going to install iRaspbian on a Raspberry Pi 3, you should bear in mind that Open GL must be activated for performance to improve. In our case we have not noticed big changes (Raspberry without overclock), so our recommendation is that you install the image on a Raspberry Pi 4, which after all was the intention of the creator of this distribution. To activate it you will have to do the following:
- Open the terminal.
- Enter the command sudo raspi-config
- Enter a password if you changed it by following the steps described above.
- Go to section 7, Advanced options .
- Choose option A8 GL Driver
- Here you can choose three options:
-
- Legacy – Original driver without OpenGL
- GL (Fake KMS) – OpenGL Driver without full KMS (Kernel Mode Settings) support
- GL (Full KMS) – OpenGL Driver with full KMS (Kernel Mode Settings) support
Select option 3 to find the best performance, but if you notice that it does not work correctly, go back into the configuration and select option 2 to subtract load from the system. In our case we have not managed to improve the performance of the system too much, so we recommend using a Raspberry Pi 4, since it does not require entering this configuration.
