The developers of the Raspberry Pi project have presented a new version of the Raspberry Pi OS distribution 2025-05-06 (Raspbian), based on the Debian 12 package base and the Linux 6.12 kernel. About 35 thousand packages are available in the repository. The desktop environment is based on the labwc composite server, which uses the wlroots library from the Sway project. Three assemblies have been prepared for download - a reduced one (494 MB) for server systems, with a basic desktop (1.1 GB) and a full one with an additional set of applications (2.7 GB), available for 32- and 64-bit architectures. Additionally, an update has been formed for the old edition of Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy), based on the Linux 6.1 kernel and the Debian 11 package base.
Key changes:
- The Linux kernel has been updated to release 6.12 (previously 6.6 was used).
- The implementation of the login lock screen is included, based on a modified swaylock application from the Sway project. The Raspberry Pi OS developers added a new frontend to swaylock, which supports setting a background image.
- Automatic login settings have been separated for the graphical session and console (Ctrl-Alt-F1). Automatic login is still enabled by default, but the user can now selectively change its behavior via the Raspberry Pi Configuration configurator and the raspi-config utility.
- Added a new application for managing printers and printing output. The application is based on a plugin for the GNOME configurator.
- Improved performance on touchscreens. Many issues that appeared when using Wayland have been resolved, such as double-click handling. Mouse emulation mode on touchscreens is enabled by default (touching the screen generates a click, and double-tapping generates a double-click). A new menu for selecting the operating mode — mouse emulation or gesture control — has been offered in the Touchscreen section of the configurator. To simplify file manager management when gesture control mode is enabled, options have been added for opening files with one click and displaying the context menu when holding down the touch screen.
- Composite manager labwc has been updated to version 0.8.1.
- Squeekboard has been updated to support multi-monitor configurations and customize the primary screen for keyboard output.
- Due to the end of support for the second version of the manifest in Chromium, the uBlock Origin Lite add-on for blocking ads is now pre-installed instead of the uBlock Origin add-on. Chromium has been updated to version 135.0.7049.84, and Firefox to version 138.0.
- The wf-panel-pi utility, which creates a panel on the desktop, has been sped up.
- Instead of the zenity utility for generating dialogs and information messages from the command line, a faster analogue is used - zenoty.
- Added new application rasputin for keyboard and mouse configuration, replacing lxinput.
- To request passwords, the sudopwd application is used instead of the zenity-based script.
Source: opennet.ru
