The Raspberry Pi is, without a doubt, the most popular micro-computer that we can buy to use at home. This device is manufactured on the basis of open hardware, and designed to work mainly with Linux operating systems (although there are projects that have managed to install Windows and even Android). Although we can download and install different operating systems, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has what we know as the official system, Raspberry Pi OS, formerly known as Raspbian. And this system just got a big update that all users of this device should try.
Raspberry Pi OS is an operating system based on Debian, although it is specially optimized and prepared to make the most of the power of this micro-computer with an ARM processor. As you might expect, the RPi Foundation is constantly improving its operating system and adding new functions and features that may be useful to users.
Thus, recently, the foundation launched a new version, full of new features and focused on improving, above all, usability, coinciding with the launch of the Raspberry Pi 400 , the “personal computer” inside a keyboard that continues to reinvent the concept of micro -computer.
What’s New in the Raspberry Pi OS December Update
The first of the novelties that we find is a new PulseAudio server. This is the most used sound server in Linux systems and, finally, it comes by default to the main Raspberry Pi distro. Thanks to it we will have much more control over the sound of our device, as well as make mixes.
Another very important novelty is that, finally, Raspberry Pi OS is capable of printing. Oddly enough, this feature is not available in previous versions of this system. This is possible thanks to the inclusion of CUPS (Common UNIX Printing Systems), who will be in charge of registering and making calls to the printers.
Within the configuration options we will find two new entries. The first will allow us to control the LED of the RPi so that it blinks as we want, and the second will allow us to control the Raspberry fan, if it is connected.
Other interesting changes that we can find in this new version are:
- Chromium has been updated to version 84. As a result, Teams and Google Meet should work normally. Also, this will be the last version that Flash will bring.
- Improvements to Orca and other accessibility features.
Download or update
If we already have Raspberry Pi OS installed on our memory card, we can update directly to this new version by executing the same command as in any other Debian-based distribution, that is:
sudo apt Update && sudo apt full-upgrade
If we are going to transmit audio via Bluetooth, we must also perform an additional configuration to replace the bluealsa server with the one from puseaudio:
sudo apt purge bluealsa && sudo apt install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
After restarting the Raspberry Pi we will already be using the latest version of this system.
In case you want to start from scratch, Raspberry Pi OS can be downloaded for free from its main website , both individually and as part of NOOBS .