Raspberry Pi OS Now Based On Debian 12 "Bookworm" + Wayland

For going along with the recently announced Raspberry Pi 5 speedy single board computer, an updated Raspberry Pi OS is now available that has re-based against Debian 12 "Bookworm".

The shift of the package base from Debian 11 to Debian 12 with this Raspberry Pi OS is significant on its own. But making this new version even more significant is that it's finally using a Wayland-based environment by default rather than X11/X.Org. Raspberry Pi OS is now making use of Wayfire as its Wayland compositor for the lightweight Raspberry Pi OS desktop.

Raspberry Pi has found their new Wayland-based environment to deliver better performance, better system security, and a good experience for both Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 based devices.

Another big change with today's Raspberry Pi OS upgrade is making use of PipeWire by default for audio handling. Some other big items with this new version include a Raspberry Pi optimized version of the Mozilla Firefox browser, networking enhancements, and various other changes.

I've been testing this Raspberry Pi OS release on the Raspberry Pi 5 and it's been working out very well. To learn more about this big Raspberry Pi OS upgrade or to download it for your RPi, visit RaspberryPi.com.