The developers of the Raspberry Pi project have published the autumn update of the Raspberry Pi OS (Raspbian) distribution based on the Debian package base. Three builds have been prepared for download - a reduced (463 MB) for server systems, with a desktop (1.1 GB) and a full one with an additional set of applications (3 GB). The distribution comes with a PIXEL user environment (a fork of LXDE). About 35 packages are available for installation from the repositories.
In the new release:
- Migration to the Debian 11 "Bullseye" package database (previously used Debian 10).
- All PIXEL desktop components and offered applications have been converted to use the GTK3 library instead of GTK2. The reason for the migration is the desire to get rid of the intersection in the distribution of different versions of GTK - Debian 11 actively uses GTK3, but the PIXEL desktop was based on GTK2. So far, desktop migration to GTK3 has been held back by the fact that many things, especially those related to customizing the appearance of widgets, were much easier to implement on GTK2, and GTK3 removed some useful features used in PIXEL. The transition required the implementation of replacements for old GTK2 features and slightly affected the appearance of widgets, but the developers made sure that the interface retained its familiar look.
- The Mutter composite window manager is enabled by default. Previously rounded tooltip corners were handled by GTK2, but in GTK3 these operations have been delegated to the composite manager. Compared to the previously used Openbox window manager, Mutter provides a pre-rendering of screen content in memory (compositing) before it is actually displayed on the screen, allowing for additional visual effects such as window corner rounding, window border shadows, and open/close animations. windows. Migrating to Mutter and GTK3 also allows you to get rid of the binding to the X11 protocol and provide support for working on top of Wayland in the future.
The downside of switching to Mutter was an increase in memory consumption. It is noted that Raspberry Pi boards with 2 GB of RAM are enough for work, but less memory is no longer enough for a graphical environment. Boards with 1 GB of RAM have a fallback mode that returns Openbox, which has limited interface styling options (for example, showing rectangular tooltips instead of rounded ones and no visual effects).
- A system for displaying notifications has been implemented, which can be used in the taskbar, in plugins for the panel and in various applications. Notifications appear in the upper right corner of the screen in chronological order and are automatically closed 15 seconds after they appear (or can be manually closed immediately). Currently, notifications are only displayed when USB devices are ready to be removed, when the battery is dangerously low, when updates are available, and when there are errors in the firmware level.
Added options to settings to change the timeout or turn off notifications.
- The panel has a plugin with a graphical interface for checking for and installing updates, which makes it easier to keep the system and applications up to date, and eliminates the need to manually launch the apt package manager in the terminal. Updates are checked for every boot or every 24 hours. When new versions of packages are found, a special icon is shown in the panel and a notification is displayed.
When you click on the icon, a menu is displayed through which you can call up an interface to view a list of updates awaiting installation, and initiate a selective or full installation of updates.
- The number of view modes in the file manager has been reduced - instead of four modes (thumbnails, icons, small icons and a list), two modes have been proposed - thumbnails and a list, since the thumbnail and icon modes essentially differed only in the size of the icons and the display of content thumbnails, which misled users . Disabling the display of content thumbnails is controlled by a special option in the View menu, and the size can be changed using the zoom buttons.
- By default, the modesetting KMS driver is enabled, which is not tied to specific types of video chips and essentially resembles the VESA driver, but works on top of the KMS interface, i.e. it can be used on any hardware that has a kernel-level DRM/KMS driver. Previously, a specific driver was offered for the Raspberry Pi graphics subsystem, including closed firmware components. Using the standard KMS interface and using the driver offered in the Linux kernel allows you to get rid of bindings to the Raspberry Pi-specific proprietary driver and makes it possible to work with the graphics subsystem of applications designed for the standard Linux API.
- The proprietary driver for working with the camera has been replaced with the open library libcamera, which offers a universal API.
- The Bookshelf app offers free access to PDF editions of Custom PC magazine.
- Updated software versions, including the Chromium 92 browser with optimizations for hardware accelerated video playback.
- Improved selection of time zone and localization options in the initial setup wizard.
Source: opennet.ru